Approved For Release 2003/09/.1 0
: CIA-RDP96-00788R001 70021 001 1-0
POINT OF VIEW
FRED MARTIN: ART AND HISTORY
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
"How may
I reach the mythic world?" A
little
after
3:00 on
the
afternoon
of May
6,
1978,
wearing headphones and lying on my back
In a
dark room,
I sent this question out "everywhere
Into
the
furthest
reaches
of
my
expanded
consciousness.
' The purpose of the following is to
tell how
I got there on the floor of that room In a
Mill
Valley
medical
center,
why
I
asked
the
question, and what the answers were.
During most of 1975 and '76,
I concentrated
all
of my attention as an artist on creating A Travel
Booh, published by Arion Press In San Francisco
'
In November,
1976. By January
of
1977,
I was
ready for new experiences, new things to see and
hear and
think
about,
and
I
remembered
the
Monroe
Institute
of Applied
Sciences, which
a
friend had tcld me would provide the experience
of timelessness nol as an esthetic speculation as
•
in my book but as an experiential fact. Motivated
chiefly
by
curiosity
and
the
need
for
new
adventures, but also by the need to reestablish my
connection with the mythic world to which art had
always
been my
access and
which
had
been
summed up and also at least for a time closed off
by completion of the Travel Booh ,
I contacted the
Institute.
My "Gateway Weekend"
with
the Monroe
Institute was in March, 1977.
It was a stupendous
revelation to me of whole new continents of the
mythic and my
place
In them, and
these new
worlds were
revealed
with
an
Immediacy and
power
far beyond any
artistic techniques
I had
ever
found
for
similar
purposes.
This
power
continued
during
the
following
spring
and
summer, but has seemed to fade during the year
'
since. Often
I have seen this fading In a negative
light,
but there
is
also a
positive aspect
to
It,
because now that the Impact of novelty has faded
and
the
experiences
have
been
more
fully
Integrated Into the general patterns of my
life,
I
can write ol them
publicly,
as
here.
In
fact,
it
seems to me that the fading might well mean not
that the techniques and the
resultant
materials
are only insubstantial dreams, but rather that the
core of the work has become so deeply entrenched
in my mental processes that
I no
longer notice
how
really novel
it
Is.
Early
In my work with the Monroe system,
I
learned
that there were
three
related
types
of
consciousness developed
in the
training,
called
Focus 10, 12 and 15.
I found that Focus 10 is the
consciousness
wherein
clairvoyance,
telepathy,
.
psychic
healing
and
veridical
out
of
body
-
experiences take
place.
It
is
the psychic world
typified by the work of a tribal shaman.
I found
that Focus 12
Is the realm of the mythic,
of the
mythopoela of certain writers and
artists; and
I
found Focus 15 to be the realm ol union with the
(One that
Is the goal
of
all mystic contemplation.
In searching my mind and the available literature
of the psyche and the spirit for appropriate terms
lor what aspect of oneself
It
Is that engages each
of these realms,
It has come to seem that Focus 10
is the realm (or, as they used to say, "plane") of
the "etherlc body," Focus 12
Is that of the soul,
and
Focus
is
that
of
the
spirit.
(Please
remember tha,t these are my categorizations and
terms for the states as
I experienced them. Others
• who have worked with
the system
have found
them somewhat different, and so have
I from time
to time.)
In the beginning of my work with the method,
I
made
the
layman's
survey
of
the
available
scientific
literature
on
parapsychology,
and
became convinced
that
parapsychological
phe-
nomena are real, occasional phenomena that
lie
outside our contemporary scientific paradigm.
I
also became convinced that they are probably not
common enough or important enough socially to
bring about a paradigmatic shift or to Initiate the
scientific
revolution
so many
parapsychologists
desire.
I
reviewed
some
of
the
literature
on
hypnosis
because
I
felt
that
hypnosis
and
po3l-hypnotic
suggestion
followed
by
self-
hypnosis were extremely Important techniques In
the Monroe system. The literature confirmed my
feeling. The phenomenon of "frequency following
response"
which
the Monroe
system
uses
to
Induce
narrow-band,
high
amplitude,
broadly
synchronized alpha rhythms
In the brain,
I had
already
encountered
at
the
base
of
various
methods of meditation on mantras and yantras, as
well as being at the core
of Jung's analysis of
alchemy as a method of meditation pn chemical
reactions
symbolized
In
phllosophlcal/religlous
modes.
I
looked through the OOBE
literature, which
seemed
to be
all concerned with
either
seeing
Aunt Mary
In a house on the other side of town
and then finding she was actually there, or else
proving
the
survival
of
the human
personality
after
death.
I
looked
through
the
"astral"
literature because
It seemed more concerned with
travel to the mythic realm which was my original
goal. As the
scientific OOBE and
clairvoyance
literatures were fatally compromised
in my eyes
with
the
desire
for a
veridical
proof
which
is
contradictory to the nature of myth, so the astral
literature was tainted and almost destroyed by the
rotting bones
in
it of myths long dead, jumbled
together
in
the
mass
grave
of
myth
that
Is
contemporary occultism.
I have been working with the Monroe system
now
for a year and a
half. The specific
results
have been that Focus 10 has become an area of
great
use
as
far
as
maintaining
a
high
psycho-physical energy level Is concerned, but the
rest of
its practical applications, though real, are
ol no great importance to me. Focus 15 has come
to life only a few times and then
In mythic guise.
But Focus 12, the goal of all my efforts and once
so bright with promise, has seemed to fade until
.It
happened last May that lying In a dark room with
my
eyes
closed, my
brain
filled
with
a
beat
Intended
to
Initiate
a
frequency
following
response,
In the midst
of a Focus
exercise
intended
to apply
the maximum energy
of
the
unconscious
to the solution
ol
problems
In
the
external world,
I sent out Into the furthest reaches
of my expanded consciousness and waited for an
answer, "How may
I reach the mythic world?"
The
exercise
Is
constructed
to
bring
three
responses to any serious,
life question. The three
responses were;
to work the worh,
to wear the
mash and to dwell In the humble house on the hill.
Each
had
lor me
the
oracular
character
of
a
response from the l-Chlng, and
I think Focus 12
centers attention-awareness In that same general
area of being. However, the l-Ching was made for
great problems of war and world
politics, while
my answers came from and were meant to guide
the small world
of a
personal
life,
a "humble
house," and their inlerpretation,
therefore,
lies
only In the actual living of the life Itself.
I know,
however, that "to work the work" means to make
art, and “to wear the mask" means
I must wear
the head of myth
if
I would make an art of myth.
And as for (he humble house on the
hill,
I have
always felt the goal of life Is to rise as high as one
can, to look as far as one can and to know one is
always so very much smaller than the great world
one sees.O
Dl SUVERO SCULPTURE INSTALLED IN D.C.
Isis,
a
monumental
sculpture
by
Mark
Dl
Suvero, will be dedicated on July 19 on
Its site at
the
plaza
of
the
Smithsonian's
Hlrshhorn
Museum and Sculpture Garden. The work was
commissioned by the Institute of Scrap Iron and
Steel,
Inc.,
to commemorate
Its
fiftieth anniver-
sary. Oi Suvero completed the piece at his outdoor
studio In northern California.
Approved For Release 2003/09/10
: CIA-RDP96-00788R001 70021 001 1-0