Dear Learned LO,
A few years ago I was introduced to a form of meditation (mediation) by
which one sunk oneself into the open eye gaze of another. Let me tell you
that fifteen minutes in the eyes of another is a journey in itself;-)...In
the portraits of my drawing and painting tutor Len McComb, one of which I
think we have access to here in the picture archive ... (maybe you can
remind us of the url, Rick;-) eyes take a special place in the
composition. So when a some friends and I worked together, i knowing their
love of Graves' work rather intuitively opened the proceedings with that
exercise...visiting his (?) web site I came upon this manifesto of what a
human of higher purpose is to become/be. Here is what he points to...
[Host's Note: Sorry, Andrew, I cannot identify the image to which you
refer. ..Rick]
Conceptions of the Mature Personality from Dr. Graves' Research
Nodal FS
"I can say what is my conception of the mature personality in one sentence
but it would take reams of paper to clarify what I mean. So I shall, in
this endeavour, express my thoughts in one sentence and then elaborate
only upon the basis of what I mean.
The mature personality is a participating, creative personality which in
its operation does justice to every type of personality, every mode of
culture, every human potential without forming anyone into topological
moulds.
The mature personality provides a means for bringing relations of
reciprocity and willing amity to the entire family of human beings. The
mature provides for the interchange and utilization of the entire
experiences of humankind. He or she lives in a moral world which tears
down manmade barriers of law and custom widening the means of
communication and co-operation between humans.
The mature is a committed person, committing self to continuous
self-development, and to intimate relations and co-operation with all
people. He or she is one who believes in face to face interaction and
assessment, one who believes friendly eyes are the indispensable mirror
for reflecting what is. he or she believes in an absolutely open society
where every nook, every corner is exposed to anyone who is curious. He or
she behaves so as to demonstrate that every person may be freely heard.
The mature personality deliberately exercises choice which directs life
toward allegiances which are beyond the boundaries of natural communities
and the organized state and toward the ultimate hopes of mankind. He or
she seeks to widen the ties of fellowship without respect to birth, caste
or property, and disavows claims to special privilege or the exclusivity
of leadership. He or she replaces Godly authority with the temporal
authority of the time and the place. He or she softens the features which
identify a person with a particular society or culture. To the mature,
humanity is a unity of souls seeking salvation not a union of Catholics,
High Episcopalians, Orthodox Jews or Baptists.
The mature is beyond sordid concern with his or her own survival and is
focused on intensive cultivation of a belief in freedom, not a belief of
freedom.
To the mature technology is for human needs, not power, productivity,
profit or prestige and scientific endeavour is not for ruthless
exploitation or desecration. Scientific endeavour is for depth exploration
of all regions not just physical regions, so as to provide for the inner
human knowledge that will assure human supremacy.
The mature indulges in the dematerialization of self, in self-transcending
endeavours which reach beyond sordid concern with one's own survival,
beyond the over-rational and irrational, beyond mechanical uniformity
toward a concept of organic unity. He or she operates by the belief that
we are all one and should seek to enhance human expression to provide for
a world society based on human values. He or she believes one should know
both the objective and the subjective and show the ability to face one's
whole self and direct every part of it to a more unified development.
In summary, and in Freudian terms, the mature personality accepts its id,
but does not give it primacy, and fosters the sure ego but does not allow
it to depress the fullest expression of the ego."
end citation.
Jim, you will know this..." -for of all beings only to man was it granted
to speak, since only for him was it necessary. It was not necessary for
the angels or for the lower animals to speak..." Dante.
It is interesting that pivotal to religion is language and language to
religion. Between the two is something far greater than religion and
language, it is love.
My preferred language is very, very ancient. This LO is to me archetypal.
It is a gap for glimpses...I was reading this in the dawn today preparing
for uncertain moves on a blank canvas...
> Ralph Waldo Emerson (1926) (feels), the sublime is an extasy of release, in
> which the author allows the "ethereal tides to roll and circulate through
> him; then he is caught up into the life of the Universe." Perhaps these
> phrases are sufficient to call forth a possibility - the glimmering sense
> of something beyond our words that grants them force, something beyond
> reason that causes reason to leap up. And if there is a power that gives
> shape to our words, to all that is intelligible, then this power is beyond
> all that we "know to be the case." For everything we propose to exist is
> itself constructed in language. It is language that furnishes the capacity
> to distinguish this from that, me from you, up from down, in from out.
> "There is..." is a move in linguistic space. And if all that we take to
> exist, cannot be derived from a world independent of language, then how are
> we to understand the forms taken by our by our understanding? We confront
> the unnameable in this case, a "force" a "power," a "telos" that is beyond
> articulation. We confront the sublime.Yet, although this realm of the
> sublime cannot be captured in language, we can appreciate its dimension.
> How are sounds and markings converted to what we take to be language? For
> how does language acquire its intelligibility? Here we must envision
> primordial processes of relationship - the pulsing coordination of
> movements and sounds - that slowly turns the amorphous into the meaningful.
> For what is it that gives language its meaning outside a relationship?
> Thus, if we are struck with the power of a given passage of writing, it is
> not the "inward greatness of the soul" (with Longinus) that we should
> credit, but the process of relatedness which enable such passages to carry
> us with them. Likewise the source of "awe", "inspiration," or "terror" is
> not to be found in nature (with Wordsworth), or in the person (with
> Emerson), but within unfathomable processes of relatedness which make
> meaning possible. The capacity to give life to words, and thus to transform
> culture, is not usefully traced to internal resources, but to relatedness -
> which serves as the source of all articulation, and which simultaneously
> remains beyond its reach. We confront then, the possibility of a new order
> of sublime - suited to the techno-world of the postmodern - a relational
> sublime.Can consciousness of the relational sublime live outside the world
> of letters? I believe so. There are already myriad cultural artifacts that
> subtend its presence. Consider the movements in the sphere of popular
> culture:
SNIP
> When concert goers experience the power and ecstasy of their common
> immersion in rock and pop music, when city crowds gather to shout their
> welcome their championship team, when the throngs gather on the Washington
> mall to chant their cause, and when gays join the annual parade in San
> Francisco, they know they are participating in an event of that eclipses
> the importance of any single participant. I believe the relational sublime
> hovers close to consciousness as we click into the vast network of the
> computer bulletin board and add our entry to the unending conversation. It
> begins to make itself manifest in collaborative classroom activities,
> cooperative scientific projects, and community watches. Further, as
> multi-national organizations grow in scope and size, regions of Europe and
> North America join in trade accords, and national governments become
> increasingly dependent on international opinion, we confront the potential
> inherent in the relational sublime. If we succeed in losing the self, we
> may be prepared for a conjoint reality of far more promising potential
One word of complex warning...beware those who would seek to manipulate
and separate the divinity of words authored by free souls from the
capacity to create meanings from them as a gift from a Creatorial self.
Love
Andrew
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