OBJECTIVE ART

OBJECTIVE ART

When we say the word ‘Art’ the usual association is something visual, usually paintings. Yet art encompasses all creative endeavors including painting, sculpture, authorship of poetry, plays and prose, music, architecture, and so on. Some crafts encompass the arts as well. Think of fine Venetian glass. For jewelry, we need look no further than the great master goldsmith and jeweler, Carl Faberge. There are other examples of crafts that touch the arts.

And what of ‘objective art’? What does ‘objective art’ mean, and how can we recognize an objective work of art, and why is it important? Objective art is produced by a conscious artist, and the work produces the same higher state in different people.

Subjective art is created by unconscious artists and produces different states in individuals based on their type, center of gravity, and so on.

Another way of saying this is conscious art is always a representation of higher states, and serves both as a the third force to engage presence, as well as as a map to higher centers. Conscious works, that is, objective works of art, contains the same conscious energy with which the artist created it, thus producing the same conscious state in those who encounter it. Because objective art is created in an objective state of consciousness, it has it’s own specific ‘language as it were; the language of consciousness. There may be words attached to the state, or music or imagery. This language though, can only be accessed and understood in a higher state of consciousness.

Looking into the fourteenth century Tibetan Tanka, we see a simple, yet unmistakable representation of the human machine and it’s conscious possibilities, a picture of the four lower centers and higher centers. There are four large circular images. At each corner of the tanka are three circles. We can discern that these circles represent the moving-instinctive, intellectual and emotional divisions of the lower center the large circle represents. There are four kings of centers depicted at the top, bottom and either side. In the center of the tanka resides the portrayal of higher centers. Within this tanka there’s even more information, more than my current level of understanding allows. There are other similar ancient and not so ancient works.

We can say that these works carry the message; the great message of inconspicuous presence. Futhrrmore, if what higher centers created a hundred, a thousand, a millennia, or even eons before we encountered their creations, and we are brought to a higher state through the experience, this means that higher centers can communicate through space and time, providing of course, that we too ‘speak’ or understand their mystical language.

How to read or interpret the message of conscious evolution is what a school is designed for. Learning how to be present, with the guidance of a teacher who already understands these great works, allows the students themselves to recognize and decipher how previous schools used objective art to transmit objective knowledge and thus experience an objective state.

In his book In Search of the Miraculous Ouspensky records a conversation with Gurdjieff describing objective art:

“There are figures of gods and of various mythological beings that can be read like books, only not with the mind but with the emotions, provided they are sufficiently developed. In Central Asia we found a strange figure which we thought at first was some ancient god or devil. At first it produced upon us simply the impression of being a curiosity. But after a while we began to feel that this figure contained many things, a big, complete, and complex system of cosmology. And slowly, step by step, we began to decipher this system. It was in the body of the figure, in its legs, in its arms, in its head, in its eyes, in its ears; everywhere. In the whole statue there was nothing accidental, nothing without meaning. And gradually we understood the aim of the people who built this statue. We began to feel their thoughts, their feelings. Some of us thought that we saw their faces, heard their voices. At all events, we grasped the meaning of what they wanted to convey to us across thousands of years, and not only the meaning, but all the feelings and the emotions connected with it as well. That indeed was art!”

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