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Abstract
This paper explores the human perception of space and light as
a unifying and underlying principle in art, science and the spiritual.
Space and light are presented as a joint entity space-light which
is regarded as a prior given of human experience, both of the
objective and the subjective. If science is the systematic investigation
of the objective, then the spiritual is presented as a systematic
investigation of the subjective, with art as a possible mediator
between these two worlds. Two British mystics, Douglas Harding
and Thomas Traherne, are introduced as having systems of thought
with roots in the prior given of space-light, while the anthropic
principle from science is introduced with some of its implications
for light and space.
Keywords: consciousness, light, virtual
worlds, Thomas Traherne, Douglas Harding, anthropic principle
When consciousness is empty
of thought, it is filled with space and light
Art, Science and the Spiritual
The electronic arts comprise a relationship and discourse between
art and science, culture and technology. At the turn of the millennium
it seems that Western thought, with its Enlightenment ideals
intact and a booming Western economy, has triumphed. Science
is generously offering partnerships with the arts, while the
arts are content to frame their deepest questions within the
scientific paradigm. So why bring in the spiritual at all? What
single question of importance to the West has been answered by
the spiritual? What single freedom has the spiritual brought
to artists? Do not the majority of the Indian sub-continent,
supposedly the home of the most ancient and sophisticated spiritual
traditions in the world, aspire to the middle-class comforts
of the West?
All this would be true if it were not for the most important
outstanding scientific question to spill into the new millennium:
the nature of consciousness. The question was scientifically
unaskable at the end of the nineteenth century, but has become
scientifically inescapable at the end of the twentieth. The proposition
at the heart of much of my work is that certain forms of spirituality,
or forms of mysticism, present a framework for understanding
and inquiry into the nature of consciousness, a framework that
conventional science not merely lacks, but the adoption of which
would contradict its ground rules. By proposing a new look at
the spiritual, or by accepting it as a third and equal partner
to art and science, I hope to fructify both art and science,
and also to preserve the natural boundaries of all three. As
a trained scientist I have a respect and understanding of its
principles that make me flinch at some of the pseudo-science
brought to bear on consciousness studies; at the same time, as
a life-long student of the mystical, I am equally disturbed by
the uninformed hi-jacking or patronising of the spiritual by
scientists.
Let us look in more detail at the three-way relationship between
art, science and the spiritual, by considering pairs of relationships:
Art and Science: This relationship is a familiar one to
the electronic arts practitioner, perhaps more often as a relationship
between art and technology. Science itself also has an impact
on art, in terms of propositions about the physical world that
artists engage with, and in terms of new imagery generated by
its instruments; imagery of worlds normally to small or too distant
to impinge on our unaided senses. Art in turn provides the scientist
with a fluidity of thinking and the intuitive modes of apprehension
that are central to the great scientific discoveries. It may
not do this in a direct way, but studies like Arthur Koestler's
have shown the parallels between artistic and scientific creativities
[1].
Art and the Spiritual: This relationship can be likened to a centuries-long
marriage ending in apparent divorce towards the end of the 19th
century. Roger Lipsey, art historian, has suggested that a phrase
from Constantin Brancusi, `an art of our own', sums up the desire
by 20th century artists for emancipation from the `baggage' of
religious tradition [2], though Modernism has been shown rather
surprisingly to have strong roots in the spiritual. (Some of
these arguments are presented in Concerning the Spiritual
in Art and Science.[3]) However, there is a visible interchange
between art and the spiritual in all periods of history. Art
provides the spiritual with language and metaphor, poetic expression,
and artistic forms for celebration. The spiritual in turn provides
subject matter for the artist, or may present propositions about
the subjective world (as science does about the objective), that
artists engage with.
Science and the Spiritual: This relationship seems the most contentious,
in that both provide world-views that are claimed by many in
their respective communities as sufficient and exclusive. My
claim is the opposite: that neither are sufficient for a full
understanding of human experience, and that to exclude one or
the other is to live half a life. Ken Wilber's idea of epistemological
pluralism [4] is useful in this context, though it is
not the same as the extreme relativism proposed by some post-modernists.
The interchange between science and the spiritual that I am interested
in is one that does not blur the boundaries or confuse epistemologies.
A thoughtful delineation of the spiritual should help place science
in perspective, and to keep its methods pure. Science in turn
can help in the spiritual by training the mind in rigour, doubt,
and enquiry. The dogmatists of the spiritual have much to learn
from the humility of the scientist, while the dogmatists of the
scientific have much to learn from the holism of the spiritual.
The set of relationships just outlined
imply no hierarchy or priority as areas of human endeavour and
enquiry, indeed a more equal weighting across all three would
be beneficial to much of contemporary discourse. However there
are many senses in which one could rank these activities: science
no doubt coming first when it comes to solving problems of survival,
and in providing explanations of the physical. In terms of profundity
however, science would rank third. We could say that science
deals with the most superficial level of our human experience,
the material; art deals with something closer to home, the emotional;
and the spiritual deals with the core of our subjective existence,
consciousness. When science registers as profound with us I would
suggest that it is borrowing the language of art (physicists
and mathematicians often talk of beauty), or even the language
of the spiritual (a scientific breakthrough is awesome). Art,
in dealing with the human dimension of our lives has a natural
profundity, but again, it will borrow the language of the spiritual
(a work is divine, mystical, transcendent).
Going back to science, we find that the language of science itself
is utilitarian and sterile. In the writings of some of the great
scientists, such as Einstein, Schroedinger or Eddington we find
a meta-science or metaphysics which is far from sterile, but,
as pointed out above, these writings draw their profundity from
the poetic or the spiritual. Most of the great scientists talk
of awe in certain moments of discovery, Einstein going as far
as to say that he was deeply religious in his science.
The British-born scientist and Templeton prizewinner Paul Davies
has said that `science is a surer path to god than religion [5].'
He not only claims that the scientific experience can open a
door to the transcendent, but also that science is sufficient
to take the spiritual enquiry to its ultimate (he uses the term
`God' for this, because of his Christian, theocentric intellectual
inheritance, inappropriate I think in a multi-faith world). Certainly,
any profound experience can open this door (for instance, a sunset,
a work of art, nature, falling in love) but the spiritual is
not within the language or scope of science. In the autobiographies
of so many great scientists we see that `the door is opened'
but the scientist does not walk through it. Why? Because the
room one would enter would be outside science. Even the great
Richard Feynman, who insisted on making art important in his
life, in as far as he could as a full-time scientist (he reached
good amateur status in both painting and music), stopped short
his spiritual enquiry after some desultory experiments with isolation
tanks [6].
This brings us to a useful question: can art mediate between
science and the spiritual? The single case of Richard Feynman
would suggest not, but the increasing interaction between art
and science gives a different indication. Leonardo da Vinci is
a man who could have moulded Feynman's vision; an interplay of
art and science which, at the heart of the Enlightenment ideal,
was sufficient for the deeper needs of the individual.
However, if the problem of consciousness continues to raise its
profile in the scientific community, then art and science will
have to turn to the spiritual for answers.
Space and Light: Physics
Having made some opening remarks about the relationship between
art, science and the spiritual, let us look at a theme that links
all three: space and light. I would prefer to call them `space-light',
as a single term, in that for the sighted at least, they are
not separable. We do of course have an aural and kinaesthetic
sense of space (perhaps olfactory as well for animals), but,
as this is an essay intended for electronic arts practitioners,
the visual will be central to the discussion.
To start with, a quick historical journey through science on
a ray of light. Einstein when young tried to imagine what would
happen if he could `ride a beam of light'; what would he see
as he caught up with the speed of light? His question, answered
only after plotting his own idiosyncratic course through science
education, led to a revolution in scientific thought. Light would
play a central role in the `new physics' of the 20th century,
but it was also central in the early triumphs of science, and
even in the questions that gave birth to the scientific method.
From Greek times people were aware that a group of heavenly bodies,
called planets after the Greek `to wander', followed erratic
paths that could not be explained. Saint Augustine claims to
have abandoned his first religion (Manicheanism) because one
of its leading bishops could not provide suitable astronomical
explanations, and the problem survived a further thousand years.
It was the joint efforts of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton
that eventually provided the solution in terms of the heliocentric
theory, elliptical orbits, and the inverse square law of gravitation.
None of these men would have progressed however without the key
contribution of Tycho Brahe, who invented the telescope (and
made lengthy and detailed recordings with it). Newton honoured
his predecessors by saying that if he could see so far it was
because he stood on the shoulders of giants. But what did he
see with? The telescope. Science was born through the
observation of the planets by means of the first and most significant
piece of research technology ever invented. Earth-bound, science
could not arise, because of the difficulty of separating out
cause and effect, shown for example in the Greek misconception
of force as that which produced velocity. Because the planets
move in a vacuum, and are mostly only affected by the sun, they
present what is known in science as a simple two-body problem.
(To solve problems with three interacting bodies is not just
50% more difficult, but orders of magnitude more difficult, and
when we come to more complex systems, then chaos theory rules.)
However, the success of science with the planets gave experimenters
the confidence to tackle more complex earth-bound problems, and
also showed how external influences must be limited in order
for an analysis to be made. In effect the heavens showed the
model for the scientific laboratory.
The problem of the planets (which Richard Tarnas believes was
central to the development of the Western mind [7]) was a space-light
problem: the problem was spatial, and the solution found through
the first instrument of light: the telescope. The second instrument
of light could be considered to be the microscope, which allowed
biology and chemistry to develop, and the third instrument (I
would claim) is the visual computer. Light then played a central
role in the establishment of science, which for several hundred
years after Newton seemed to promise a complete logical explanation
of the universe, and, by implication, of human experience. By
a quirk of fate, it was light again that heralded the end of
science. I should say of course `end of science' a figure of
speech like `the end of history,' figures of speech that hide
serious points however. By the `end of science' I mean the entry
into science of paradox, a direct challenge to Aristotle's law
of the excluded middle, that a thing cannot be both `a' and `b'
at the same time. Light, it turned out, was two things at the
same time, a particle and a wave. This is light-paradox number
one. Light-paradox number two takes place at the atomic level:
it is called quantum indeterminacy (and is illustrated with the
Schroedinger's cat gedanken-experiment). Light-paradox
number three takes place at high speeds: observers travelling
at such speeds experience time-dilation and space-contraction
Einstein's general theory of relativity.
The origins of light-paradox three are satisfyingly found in
an experiment made with simple lenses and mirrors: the Michelson-Morely
experiment, the most famous null-result in physics. Put simply,
it says that the speed of light is invariant with respect to
the observer. We know the speed of light in a vacuum is about
186,000 miles per second. If I travel towards a light source
at 100,000 miles per second, then measurements of the speed of
light relative to myself should give a joint velocity of 286,000
miles per second. If a colleague were to travel at 100,000 miles
per second away from the same light source then he or she should
measure a joint velocity of only 86,000 miles per second. In
fact we would both measure the same velocity, 186,000 metres
per second. An absurdity! But it turns out that the invariance
of the speed of light with respect to the observer is part of
the deep structure of existence, like the inverse square law,
or the periodic table. However, the reasons that the paradoxes
of light hold a difference significance for us than the other
discoveries mentioned, is not just that they undermine the notion
of science as rational, but that they point to something anthropocentric
about the structure of the universe.
Scientists John Barrow and Frank Tipler have made a study of
scientific results that have anthropocentric implications, summing
up their approach as the `anthropic principle'. Their arguments
are presented in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle,[8]
perhaps one of the most significant books written on the implications
of science this century. In its `weak' form the principle holds
that the nature of the universe is such as to make the development
of human life inevitable, because we could not exist in any other
type of universe, and therefore could not ask questions about
its nature. Few scientists admit to holding this principle in
its strong form however, which is put thus: `the evolution of
the universe is as dependent on consciousness as consciousness
is dependent on the universe'. The symmetry of this statement
puts consciousness (the ultimate subjective) and the measurable
universe (the ultimate objective) on equal footings and co-dependent.
This radical view, if more widely accepted, would mark the `end
of science' as we know it, and the start of a more holistic approach.
My proposition here is that the anthropic world-view would not
have arisen without light. Light was essential to the birth and
death of a particular form of science; light is also at the centre
of artistic and spiritual languages.
Science has recently engaged in a sometimes-bitter dispute with
non-scientists who have proposed that science is `a social construct.'
The extreme relativism of some forms of feminist and post-modern
critical theory inevitably led to this proposition, and many
spheres of human activity find liberation in such an approach.
For those who participate in the hard sciences, and who may even
have sympathy with the broad thrust of such an approach, the
overwhelming evidence from science is that there are immutable
laws governing the structure and behaviour of the universe. The
social scientists cite the `new' physics (the physics that has
led to the anthropic principle) for examples of so-called `laws'
of science being overturned by new discoveries. Why then should
not another set of new discoveries overturn the current theories?
Where is the immutability in all this? I believe, however convincing
this argument may be at first glance, that it is flawed. (Neither
is it the basis for the `end of science' thesis.) If we go back
to the planets, then we find that at the end of the 19th century
they still posed problems in their movements, that is a few small
anomalies remained, which the inverse-square law could not explain.
It took Einstein's general theory of relativity to resolve them.
So does relativity contradict the inverse-square law? Can we
find in this the relativism beloved of post-modernists, such
as found in fashion, politics and philosophy? Certainly not.
Relativity is a refinement of earlier science, valid only for
massive bodies and on large scales or velocities. Newtonian mechanics
is still valid for the vast majority of every-day calculations,
and there is nothing in science to suggest that this will ever
change.
`Science is a social construct' is true in a trivial sense: science
is carried out by people who live in society, and whose behaviour
is to some extent socially determined. If we had a radically
different society would this lead to a radically different science?
Not, at least, in the hard sciences. However, it is interesting
to ask to what extent the anthropic principle is a social construct.
Let us take just one of the sections in Barrow and Tipler's book,
section 4.8, which deals with the question of dimensionality.
(I have explored some of the issues to do with dimensionality
in The Tyranny and Liberation of Three-Space[9],
which the following discussion extends.)
At the end of the 19th and start of the 20th century many intellectuals
became interested in n-dimensional space, partly through the
work of mathematicians like Minkowsky, and artists such as Duchamp
and the Cubists, while the Constructivists explored imagery that
attempted to portray four spatial dimensions. Abbot's Flatland
[10], a nineteenth-century social satire about
a two-dimensional world, attracted a cult following that persists
today. Barrow and Tipler have collected together serious scientific
papers asking the question, why does our world have three
spatial dimensions rather than four or two, or any other (relativity
shows that there are four dimensions, but the fourth is time).
Different and independent studies apparently show that one of
the essential pre-conditions for life to evolve is a planet in
stable orbit around a sun, stable that is for billions
of years. This is only possible in n-dimensional space where
n is three! So, we learn from science that a prior given
of a space that could contain humans is that it is three-dimensional.
Could this idea be a social construct? After all it was arrived
at via the anthropic principle. The answer is yes in the trivial
sense (a human has to exist to ask the question), but no in the
sense that a radically different society would not give a different
answer. The prior given of three-dimensional space is at the
level of the individual, not at the level of society.
What science shows beyond doubt, I believe, and what is probably
the motivation for most scientific study, is that the universe
has a structure that can be discovered, not invented. Another
way of putting it is that this structure is a prior given of
the universe, or, to put it in a more human-oriented way, this
structure is part of the prior given of human experience. Now,
returning briefly to my opening questions, if science is so good
at excavating and delineating the prior given of our experience,
why turn to the spiritual? Because, I would suggest, at best,
the spiritual performs a complementary task in the subjective
world. John Polkinghorne [11] has suggested that both science and religion
are an inquiry into what is. If we are careful about the type
of religion, or the spiritual, referred to in this statement,
then yes, it is also an enquiry. But it operates in a different
way and in a different sphere: the wholly subjective. If science
provides an understanding of the prior given of the wholly objective,
then the spiritual provides an understanding of the prior given
of the wholly subjective.
It should be immediately stressed however that mainstream religion
rarely provides a context for enquiry, and so comparisons between
science and mainstream religions (of any faith) are misleading.
It is generally the mystics (using this term in the formal sense
rather than the populist one) that seem to have undertaken such
enquiries, effectively turning their lives into laboratories
(and sometimes paying with their lives for proclaiming the results).
The results, often termed in the West as the `perennial philosophy'
(and argued for by Aldous Huxley in a book of the same name [12]),
can be seen as providing the prior given of the subjective, the
prior given of our interiority, or the prior given of consciousness
itself.
Space and Light: Mystics
It is commonly remarked that there are many spiritual metaphors
using light, in fact one of the few exceptions to the spiritual
language of light is found in the `Divine Darkness' of Dionysius
the pseudo-Areopagite (probably a Syrian hermit of the 5th or
6th century CE). Can we make a connection between the paradoxical
nature of light in physics, and its role in the spiritual? And
can this connection take further the understanding of the role
of light in the visual arts? I believe so.
`Illumination' is term often given to the intense spiritual awakening
experienced by mystics, `enlightenment' another. However the
attitudes of East and West are very different to this event;
in the West `enlightenment' is a term reserved for an intellectual
and cultural process, while in the East it is meant in the mystic
sense, that is, beyond intellect and beyond culture. In the West
the great spiritual leaders (Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed in historical
order for the three `religions of the Book') are figures whose
inner state there is no possibility of attaining, while in the
East the great spiritual leaders (more difficult to pinpoint
but including Krishna, Buddha, Mahavira and Lao Tsu) are figures
whose `enlightenment' is not just attainable, but a state required
of the aspirant.
If we return to the opening remark, `when consciousness is empty
of thought it is filled with space and light' then we might examine
it in relation to our questions. I framed the sentence as summing
up Eastern mysticism in a certain way, but also to introduce
a very British 20th century mystic, Douglas Harding.
Douglas Harding
Harding was an architect, so he was predisposed to the qualities
of light and space. His `enlightenment' happened to take place
in the Himalayas, though he is convinced that the light and space
of any location could trigger the same process, indeed that it
acts as a continual demonstration of our true, enlightened, nature.
A brief description of his experience shows both the factors
common to many such accounts, but also introduces his unique
and whimsical understanding of it:
What actually happened
was something absurdly simple and unspectacular: I stopped thinking.
A peculiar quiet, an odd kind of alert limpness or numbness,
came over me. Reason and imagination and all mental chatter died
down. For once, words really failed me. Past and future dropped
away. I forgot who and what I was, my name, manhood, animalhood,
all that could be called mine. It was as if I had been born that
instant, brand new, mindless, innocent of all memories. There
existed only the Now, that present moment and what was clearly
given in it. To look was enough, and what I found was khaki trouserlegs
terminating downwards in a pair of brown shoes, khaki sleeves
terminating sideways in a pair of pink hands, and a khaki shirtfront
terminating upwards in absolutely nothing whatever! Certainly
not a head.
It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole
where a head should have been, was no ordinary vacancy, no mere
nothing. On the contrary it was very much occupied. It was a
vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything
room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far above them
snow-peaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky.
I had lost a head and gained a world.
It was all, quite literally, breathtaking. I seemed to stop breathing
altogether, absorbed in the Given. Here it was, this superb scene,
brightly shining in the clear air, alone and unsupported, mysteriously
suspended in the void, and (and this was the real miracle, the
wonder and delight) utterly free of "me", unstained
by any observer. Its total presence was my total absence, body
and soul. Lighter than air, clearer than glass, altogether released
from myself, I was nowhere around.
Yet in spite of the magical and uncanny quality of this vision,
it was no dream, no esoteric revelation. Quite the reverse: it
felt like a sudden waking from the sleep of ordinary life, an
end to dreaming. It was self-luminous reality for once swept
clean of all obscuring mind. It was the revelation, at long last,
of the perfectly obvious. It was a lucid moment in a confused
life-history. It was a ceasing to ignore something which (since
early childhood at any rate) I had always been too busy or too
clever to see. It was naked, uncritical attention to what had
all along been staring me in the face my utter facelessness.
In short, it was all perfectly simple and plain and straightforward,
beyond argument, thought, and words. There arose no questions,
no reference beyond the experience itself, but only peace and
a quiet joy, and the sensation of having dropped an intolerable
burden.[13]
Harding's `headlessness' is an absurdity that does however resonate
strongly with the `no-mind' of Zen. Harding also points up in
a way that no mystic has done before to the prior given of experience,
when mind is silent: it is a light-space phenomenon, curiously
absent of self. Harding believes that children and animals see
this prior given unmediated and as presented, but that the price
of adulthood is to take on the notion that we are what we look
like from approximately six feet away (and in its extreme becomes
the `image-consciousness' of fashion). Our subjective experience
on the other hand is maintained as Harding describes in the above
passage, and for which he uses the shorthand `headlessness'.
It takes the child-like gravity of the mystic to recognise it
however.
Einstein and Harding have this in common: they were bold enough
to accept a prior given at face value and push its implications
to the limits, one in the objective realm, and the other in the
subjective realm. For Einstein to accept the invariance of the
speed of light with respect to the observer as a given liberated
his thought from conventional restraints that had prevented others
from making the discoveries of relativity, and allowed him to
develop the special theory of relativity. (He repeated
this strategy by taking inertial and gravitational acceleration
to be the same thing, against all conventional wisdom, leading
to the general theory of relativity.) Einstein remained
a scientist of his time however, in that he did not push the
anthropic implication of his postulates. Harding took his discovery
at face value and created a new cosmology that places the individual
at the centre of a universe of space and light. Curiously Einstein's
discovery does the same: the speed of light is invariant with
respect to you, placing you at centre-stage. It does not matter
what your relative velocity with respect towards a light source,
you conveniently shrink (the Lorenz contraction) to allow you
to measure it at the only permissible speed (in a vacuum): 186,000
miles a second. But nobody else experiences the shrinkage unless
they travel with you!
We are brought now to a basic difficulty with this exposition:
the charge of solipsism, the view that nothing exists outside
of our own mind. If we say of someone that `they think they're
at the centre of the universe' or `they think the world revolves
around them' we are saying in a colourful way that they are selfish.
But Einstein's and Harding's discoveries may show that solipsism
simply reflects part of the deep structure of our experience,
a prior given of the objective and subjective universe. Solipsism
in the West has had an interesting history, involving philosophers
such as Descartes and Berkeley, though mostly it is rejected
by serious thinkers. In the East no such problem exists. If we
take the root religion of the East, Hinduism, then we find that
in its core mystical texts, the Upanishads, an identity between
the individual and the universe is a central proposition, summed
up as `thou art that' or as `atman is brahman' (meaning the individual
soul has in some way identity with the universal soul or God).
Let us continue the exploration of these ideas by taking a deeper
look at Harding's proposition that children and animals `see'
better than adults the prior given of space and light. We will
do this through the work of another British mystic, Thomas Traherne.
Thomas Traherne
Traherne was born in 1637, but his major works were not discovered
until the end of the 19th century, and some as recently as 1957.
He was a chaplain from the age of 32 until his death in 1674.
I consider Traherne to be one of the `lost Buddhas of the West',
a group that includes Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plotinus,
Spinoza, Walt Whitman, and Douglas Harding. Traherne's work is
obscure and needs some background in mysticism to decipher, but
has an extraordinary resonance with Harding's (a British pop
group called the Incredible String Band once honoured both men
with a song called `Douglas Traherne Harding'). Passages in some
of Traherne's poems could, with some stylistic corrections for
the differing periods and cultures, come straight from Whitman's
Leaves of Grass. Whitman, Harding and Traherne have a
common goal in their teachings (for their life and works are
properly considered as teachings): to make `you possessor of
the whole world.' This phrase comes from Traherne's Centuries
of Meditations [14] and is another way of saying that
one is `filled with space and light'.
Traherne's Poems of Felicity celebrate the vision of the
child, saying for example, `To infancy, O Lord, again I come,
/ That I my manhood may improve,' and `A simple infant's eye
is such a treasure / That when `tis lost w'enjoy no real pleasure.'
In this child-like vision all the contents of his visible world
are his treasures, whether pebbles, childrens's faces or the
property of others. If we bracket out the archaic, poetic language,
and the theistic sections (Traherne was after all a chaplain),
then we find a vision stripped to its basics of light and space.
The emphasis he places on light is shown in this line: `The visive
rays are beams of light indeed, / Refined, subtle, piercing,
quick and pure.' Traherne is not repeating a fallacy of the Middle
Ages that vision involves firing rays into the surrounding, but
making the point that vision is filled with light. He is echoing
the sentiment of Saint Katharine of Sienna who said `I am the
light by which I see.'
But can we make a distinction between childish and childlike?
In an old Abbott and Costello film they find a thousand dollars
tied together with a rubber band. They pick it up, turn it over,
making remarks of amazement, and twang the elastic. Finally one
of them says: `Wow! Real rubber!' (Note: there was a reason
for this, but I like the story out of context.) It is hard for
the educated Westerner not to find Traherne, Whitman and Harding
similarly foolish, perhaps mistaking their capacity to become
the space and light for all things as a form of possession, of
owning, that cannot distinguish the realities of legal ownership;
that cannot separate the value of a thousand dollar bundle from
the rubber band that holds it together. The accusations that
the mystics are foolish, solipsistic, Panglossian or even anodyne
are common. If, as I contend, they have in fact something important
to say about the prior given of space and light, then we need
to examine these accusations in more detail.
The pre-trans Fallacy
Ken Wilber has introduced into this debate the notion of the
pre-trans fallacy, that we may mistakenly view the post-transcendent
individual as pre-adult, that is childish or immature. Although
we know virtually nothing about Traherne from contemporary sources,
Whitman and Harding are well-documented, and are far from naïve,
Panglossian, or anodyne, indeed `grizzled' and `forbidding' (words
Whitman used for himself) describe them both well, though `felicitous'
is certainly part of their make-up. The paradox is that such
serious mature individuals present what seems to be the
child's version of reality. As Traherne says however, it is `to
improve his manhood'. As Einstein saw, and the child in the story
about the Emperor's new clothes saw, the simple and obvious may
in fact represent the deep structure of our universe, however
inconvenient to the adult mind (or scientific establishment).
There is not space here to explore Ken Wilber's work other than
to say that the arguments he puts forward in the pre-trans fallacy
are useful, though have a strong basis in developmental psychology.
Consciousness
The Scottish philosopher David Hume was concerned how we construct
a three-dimensional coherent world from the discrete and kaleidoscopic
sense-impressions that continuously flood us. This is an early
version of one of the key problems in current research into consciousness:
the question of holism. How do we account for the unity of consciousness?
If we restrict this to the question of how do we account for
the unity of our experience of three-dimensional space, then
the notion of a `prior given' as developed here may help. We
have seen that light has intense anthropic implications, and
so too does three-dimensional space. If consciousness is the
ground of all human experience, then why not identify it with
space-light as the ground of experience? In the extreme of objective
experience, hard science, the anthropic principle has established
that space-light is intimately connected with the evolution of
human life, even the weak anthropic position agrees with this.
In the extreme of subjective experience, the heights of mysticism
as found for example in the works of Harding and Traherne, space-light
plays a central role. And who stands in the middle between the
extreme objective and the extreme subjective? The artist.
On could see this as an issue of simplicity: art, science and
the spiritual all tend to reduce the contents of consciousness
until light-space is relatively empty, in which, through a few
bare essentials, it can be understood and revelled in. In the
simplicity of the scientific laboratory, a place where extraneous
influences are minimised (as in the celestial laboratory of the
Enlightenment), the deep structure of space-light emerges, as
objective fact. In the simplicity of the mystic's inner life
the deep structure of space-light emerges, as subjective fact.
The artist oscillates between simplicity and complexity, the
purity of one period giving way to the Gothic of the next, only
to be swept aside by the re-assertion of simplicity.
Space-light is more than this however: it is in itself a delight,
separately and together. The infants of all mammal species takes
a kinaesthetic delight in their limbs, and soon extend this to
a delight in space-light as they explores their environment (watching
infants with a cardboard box quickly reminds one of this, and
confirms Traherne in the sentiment that the simplest of things
are the real treasures).
Conclusion: The Arts
Having detailed some arguments from physics and mysticism concerning
the significance of space and light to consciousness, it can
only be left as an open question at this point how the artists
of the new millennium may integrate these concepts into their
work. The electronic arts practitioner, in some ways the new
polymath, is well placed to use the new space-light tools of
virtual reality to explore the striking resonance regarding the
prior given of space and light across science and mysticism.
It is stressed that only certain forms of mysticism deal directly
with the relationship of space-light to consciousness, though
light itself is a widespread metaphor in the spiritual. The anthropic
principle in science encompasses a rich set of ideas that resonate
outside of science, into art and the spiritual, and may hold
the key to a better understanding of consciousness. The question
as to how art can mediate between science and the spiritual is
recommended as an important one for the new millennium, though,
as this paper suggests, the fundamentals of light and space may
be a fruitful starting place for the enquiry.
References:
[1]
Koestler, Arthur, The Act of Creation,
London: Penguin Arkana, 1989
[2]
Lipsey, Roger, An Art of Our Own
- The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art, Boston and Shaftesbury:
Shambhala, 1988
[3]
King, Mike, 'Concerning the Spiritual
in 20th C Art and Science' Leonardo, Vol. 31, No.1, pp.
21-31, 1998
[4]
Wilber, Ken, The Marriage of Sense
and Soul, Newleaf, 1998
[5]
Davies, Paul, God and the New Physics,
London: Penguin 1990, p. ix
[6]
Feynman, R.P. 'Surely You're Joking
Mr Feynman!', Unwin Paperbacks, London, Sidney, Wellington,
1988, chapter `Altered States', pp 330-337.
[7]
Tarnas, Richard, The Passion of the
Western Mind, London: Pimlico (Random House) 1996, p. 48
[8]
Barrow, John D. and Tipler, Frank J.,
The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Oxford: Clarendon
Press 1986
[9]
King, M.R., "The Tyranny and the
Liberation of Three-Space - A Journey by Ray-Tracer" to
be published in Digital Creativity, Autumn 1999
[10]
Abbot, Edwin, Flatland A Romance
of Many Dimensions,1884
[11]
Polkinghorne, John, Reason and Reality
- The Relationship between Science and Theology, London SPCK,
1991, p. 4
[12]
Huxley, A. The Perennial Philosophy,
Chatto and Windus, London, 1950
[13]
Harding, D.E. On Having No Head -
Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious, London: Arkana, 1986,
p. 1; also in Hofstadter, Douglas, and Dennett, Daniel (Eds.)
The Mind's I, Penguin Books, Middlesex, England, 1981,
pp. 23 - 24.
[14]
Traherne, Thomas, Selected Poems
and Prose, London: Penguin, 1991, p. 187
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