NOTES ON THOUGHT AND VISION.

Three states or manifestations of life: body, mind, over-mind.

Aim of men and women of highest development is
equilibrium, balance, growth of the three at once;
brain without physical strength is a manifestation of
weakness, a disease comparable to cancerous growth or
tumor; body without reasonable amount of intellect is
an empty fibrous bundle of glands as ugly and little
to be desired as body of a victim of some form of
elephantiasis or fatty-degeneracy; over-mind without
the balance of the other two is madness and a person
so developed should have as much respect as a reasonable
maniac and no more.

2.

All reasoning, normal, sane and balanced men and women need and seek at certain times of their lives, certain definite physical relationships. Men and women of temperament, musicians, scientists, artists especially, need these relationships to develop and draw forth their talents. Not to desire and make every effort to develope along these natural physical lines, cripples and dwarfs the being. To shun, deny and be-little such experiences is to bury one's talent carefully in a napkin.

When a creative scientist, artist or philosopher has been for some hours or days intent on his work, his mind often takes on an almost physical character. That is his mind becomes his real body. His over-mind becomes his brain.

When Leonardo da Vinci worked, his brain was Leonardo, the personality, Leonardo da Vinci. He saw the faces of many of his youths and babies and young women definitely with his over-mind. The Madonna of the Rocks is not a picture. It is a window. We look through a window into the world of pure over-mind.

3.

If I could visualise or describe that over-mind in
my own case, I should say this: it seems to me that
a cap is over my head, a cap of consciousness over my
head, my forehead, affecting a little my eyes. Sometimes
when I am in that state of consciousness, things about
me appear slightly blurred as if seen under water.

Ordinary things never become quite unreal nor dis-
proportionate. It is only an effort to readjust, to focus,
seemingly a slight physical effort.

That over-mind seems a cap, like water, transparent,
fluid yet with definite body, contained in a definite space.
It is like a closed sea-plant, jelly-fish or anemone.

Into that over-mind, thoughts pass and are visible
like fish swimming under clear water.

The swing from normal consciousness to abnormal
consciousness is accompanied by grinding discomfort of
mental agony.

4.

I should say - to continue this jelly-fish metaphor - that long feelers reached down and through the body, that these stood in the same relation to the nervous system as the over-mind to the brain or intellect.

There is, then, a set of super-feelings. These feelings extend out and about us, as the long, floating tentacles of the jelly-fish reach out and about him. They are not of different material, extraneous, as the physical arms and legs are extraneous to the gray matter of the directing brain. The super-feelers are part of the super-mind, as the jelly-fish feelers are the jelly-fish itself, elongated in fine threads.

I first realised this state of consciousness in my head. I visualise it just as well, now, centered in the love-region of the body or placed like a foetus in the body.

The centre of consciousness is either the brain or the love-region of the body.

Is it easier for a woman to attain this state of consciousness than for a man?

For me, it was before the birth of my child that the jelly-fish consciousness seemed to come definitely into the field or realm of the intellect or brain.

Are these jelly-fish states of consciousness interchangable? Should we be able to think with the womb and feel with the brain?

May this consciousness be centred entirely in the brain or entirely in the womb or corresponding love-region of a man's body?

5.

Vision is of two kinds - vision of the womb and vision of the brain. In vision of the brain, the region of consciousness is above and about the head; when the centre of consciousness shifts and the jelly-fish is in the body, (I visualise it in my case lying on the left side with the streamers or feelers floating up toward the brain) we have vision of the womb or love-vision.

The majority of dream and of ordinary vision is vision of the womb.

The brain and the womb are both centres of consciousness, equally important.

Most of the so-called artists of to-day have lost the use of their brain. There is no way of arriving at the over-mind, except through the intellect. To arrive at the world of over-mind vision any other way, is to be the thief that climbs into the sheep-fold.

I believe there are artists coming in the next generation, some of whom will have the secret of using their over-minds.

Over-mind artists usually come in a group. There were the great Italians, Verrochio, Angelo, Ghiberti, the lot that preceded and followed Da Vinci, including statesmen, explorers, and men and women of curious and sensitive development.

There was the great Athenian group, the dramatists, Socrates, the craftsmen and the men and women, their followers and lovers.

There is no great art period without great lovers.

6.

Socrates' whole doctrine of vision was a doctrine
of love.

We must be "in love" before we can understand the
mysteries of vision.

A lover must choose one of the same type of mind
as himself, a musician, a musician, a scientist, a
scientist, a general, a young man also interested in
the theory and practice of arms and armies.

We begin with sympathy of thought.

The minds of the two lovers merge, interact in
sympathy of thought.

The brain, inflamed and excited by this interchange
of idea, takes on its character of over-mind, becomes
(as I have visualised in my own case) a jelly-fish,
placed over and about the brain.

The love-region is excited by the appearance or
beauty of the loved one, its energy not dissipated
in physical relation, takes on its character of mind,
becomes this womb-brain or love-brain that I have
visualised as a jelly-fish in the body.

The love-brain and over-brain are both capable of
thought. This thought is vision.

7.

All men have possibilities of developing this
vision.

The over-mind is like a lense of an opera-glass.
When we are able to use this over-mind lense, the
whole world of vision is open to us.

I have said that the over-mind is a lense. I
should say more exactly that the love-mind and the
over-mind are two lenses. When these lenses are
properly adjusted, focussed, they bring the world of
vision into consciousness. The two work separately,
perceive separately, yet make one picture.

The mystic, the philosopher is content to
contemplate, to examine these pictures. The Attic
dramatist reproduced them for men of lesser or other
gifts. He realised, the whole time, that they were not
his ideas. They were eternal, changeless ideas that
he had grown aware of, dramas already conceived that he
had watched; memory is the mother, begettor of all
drama, idea, music, science or song.

We may enter the world of over-mind consciousness
directly, through the use of our over-mind brain. We
may enter it indirectly, in various ways. Every person
must work out his own way.

Certain words and lines of Attic choruses, any
scrap of da Vinci's drawings, the Delphic charioteer
have a definite, hypnotic effect on me. They are
straight, clear entrances, to me, to over-world con-
sciousness. But my line of approach, my sign-posts
are not your sign-posts.

8.

My sign-posts are not yours, but if I blaze my
own trail, it may help to give you confidence and
urge you to get out of the murky, dead, old, thousand-
times explored old world, the dead world of overworked
emotions and thoughts.

But the world of the great creative artists is never
dead. The new schools of destructive art theorists are
on the wrong track. Because Leonardo and his kind are
never old, never dead. Their world is never explored,
hardly even entered. Because it needs an over-mind or a
slight glimmering of over-mind intelligence to understand
over-mind intelligence.

The Delphic charioteer has, I have said, an almost
hypnotic effect on me: the bend of his arm, the knife-
cut of his chin, his feet, rather flat, slightly separated,
a firm pedestal for himself, the fall of his drapery, in
geometrical precision, and the angles of the ingatherings
of the drapery at the waist.

All this was no "inspiration", it was sheer, hard brain
work.

This figure has been created by a formula arrived
at consciously or unconsciously.

If we had the right sort of brains, we would receive
a definite message from that figure, like dots and lines
ticked off by one receiving station, received and trans-
lated into definite thought by another telegraphic centre.

There is no trouble about art. There is already
enough beauty in the world of art, enough in the fragments
and the almost perfectly preserved charioteer at Delphi
alone to remake the world.

There is no trouble about the art, it is the appreci-
ators we want. We want young men and women to communicate
with the charioteer and his like.

We want receiving centres for dots and dashes.

9.

It is said that da Vinci went mad if he saw a boy's face in Florence or a caged bird or a child with yellow hair that fell or stood up in tight whorls like the goldsmith work he had learned with Verrochio. Da Vinci went mad because those lines of the bird's back or the boy's shoulder or the child's hair acted on him directly, as the lines of a statue, worked out like the charioteer, would act on us if we had the right sort of receiving brain.

Two or three people, with healthy bodies and the right sort of receiving brains, could turn the whole tide of human thought, could direct lightning flashes of electric power to slash across and destroy the world of dead, murky thought.

Two or three people gathered together in the name of truth, beauty, over-mind consciousness could bring the whole force of this power back into the world.

It is true that, in the year A.D.361, the Gallilean conquered at Delphi. That was because the Hellenic mind had entirely lost the secret of dots and dashes. The electric force of the lines and angles of the priest-like body of the charioteer still gave out their message but there was no one to receive this message.

The Gallilean conquered because he was a great artist, like da Vinci.

A fish-basket, upturned on the sand, or a candle in a candle-stick or a Roman coin with its not unbeautfully wrought head of a king, could excite him and give him ideas, as the bird or boy's face or child's yellow hair gave da Vinci ideas.

10.

The Gallilean fell in love with things as well as people. He would fall in love with a sea-gull or some lake-heron that would dart up from the coarse lake grass, when Peter leapt out to drag his great boat on shore, or the plain little speckled-backed birds bought in the market by the poor Jews. Then, he would look at Peter with his great archaic head and the young Jude with his intense eyes, and he would exclaim suddenly: "ah but your faces, your faces are more beautiful, more charged with ideas, with lines that suggest and bring me into touch with the world of over-mind thought, than many, many sparrows."

He looked at the blue grass-lily and the red-brown sand-lily that grew under the sheltered hot sand-banks in the southern winter, for hours and hours. If he closed his eyes, he saw every vein and fleck of blue or vermillion. He would breathe in the fragrance with the wind and the salt. He would rest for days along the shores of the sea-lakes.

Then, in the town, there would be some tragedy and he would send the friends and wailing relatives out of the way. He would be angry, as he looked at the little girl's face, that she was surrounded by such ugliness. He would look at her for a long time because of the beauty of the little, straight nose and the eyelids, the hair clinging like sea weed to the fine little skull, the very white hands. He would like to have stayed looking at her for hours, like the blue grass-lily. But he was afraid they would break in, suddenly again, with their heavy, black clothes, and ugly voices. So he said, "daughter, I say unto you, arise."

11.

The first step in the Elusinian mysteries had to with sex. There were images set up in a great room, coloured marbles and brown pottery, painted with red and vermilion and coloured earthen work or clay images. The candidates for admission to the mysteries, would be shown through the room by a priest or would walk through at random, as the crowd walks through the pornographic chamber at the museum at Naples.

It would be easy enough to judge them by their attitude, whether it was one of crude animal enjoyment or hypocritical aloofness.

The crowd that got through to the second room would be different, more sensitive, more fastidious, They would correspond to certain of our intellectual types of to-day. They would be interested because it was the thing to be interested - also to show their superiority.

Any one who got safely through the mere animal stage and the intellectual stage would be left in a small room by himself to make his constation.

Anyone who wants, can get through these stages to-day, just as easily as the Elusinian candidates outside Athens in the fifth century B.C.

There is plenty of pornographic literature that is interesting and amusing.

If you cannot be entertained and instructed by Boccacio, Rabelais, Montaigne, Sterne, Middleton, de Gourment and de Règnier there is something wrong with you physically.

If you cannot read these people and enjoy them you are not ready for the first stage of initiation.

13.

If your brain cannot stand the strain of following
out these lines of thought, scientifically, and if you
are not balanced and sane enough to grasp these things
with a certain amount of detachment, you are obviously
not ready for experiments in over-mind consciousness.

Socrates said, "there are many wand-bearers but
few inspired". He meant, by wand-bearers, people who had
passed the first two stages of the Elusinian mysteries.
We mean by wand-bearers to-day, intelligent people of normal
development, who have looked into matters of life scientifi-
cally and with a certain amount of artistic appreciation.

To-day there are many wand-bearers but few inspired.

14.

One must understand a lower wisdom before one under-
stands a higher. One must understand Euripides before
one understands Aristophanes. Yet to understand dung
chemically and spiritually and with the earth sense, one
must first understand the texture, spiritual and chemical
and earthy, of the rose that grows from it.

Euripides is a white rose, lyric, feminine, a spirit.
Aristophanes is a satyr.

Is the satyr greater or less than the white rose it
embraces? Is the earth greater or less than the white
rose it brings forth? Is the dung greater or less than
the rose?

Flowers are made to seduce the senses; fragrance,
form, colour.

If you can not be seduced by beauty, you cannot
learn the wisdom of ugliness.

15.

Zeus Endendros - God in a tree; Dionysius Anthios,
God in a flower; Zeus Melios, God in the black earth,
death, disruption, disintegration; Dionysius Zagreus,
the flower torn, broken by chemical process of death,
vein, leaf, texture - white luminous lily surface, veined with
black - white lily flesh bruised, withered. "I, Lais place
my mirror here at thy feet, O Paphian - I remember and I dare
not remember. Is there a mystery beyond that of thy white
arms, O Aphrogenia? Is there a beauty greater than the
white pear-branch which broke so white against a black April
storm sky that Zeus himself was roused from his sacred
meditation, as from the ranges of Olympos he gazed below
upon the Attic pastures. He gazed below and saw you, O
white branch. He was angry, for you were more white against
the sky than the passion of his shaft. For that reason he
sent lightning to blast you, O tree. Since then no man may
speak your name, O Goddess. But we know there is a mystery
greater than beauty and that is death."

16.

The heat, the stench of things, the unutterable boredom of it all, Meleager of Gadara, what a fate; a Jew father, a Greek mother. What God of the Hebrew, what demon of the islands had presided at his ill-omened begetting? Heliodora, Zenophile, what were they but names? Greek prostitutes - branded by Syrian traders and Jew merchants alike. The stench - the dust, Meleager of Gadara - what a fate.

No wind and the sea stretching like the dead parchment rent with the devil tokens - the Hebrew script he would die to forget - the tongue he would die to forget - but that in dying he would forget that other - gold - light of gold - words, potent, a charm each leading to a world where there were cold flowers.

Heliodora, Zenophile - no Attic hetiras.

Flowers?

The roses that he had touched that morning - the boy at the wharf pier - he had stepped from a boat, wet with the sea about the islands. But the boy's wet curls smelt of salt fish and his roses were already rank - rotting - and he had dipped their streaked stems in cheap myrrh to cheat the Heliodoras of this world of their sparse

Gods, dead alike of Greek and Hebrew. What devil had sent a swine, a pig to plant its two feet on his door step and gaze within? Voices and shouting. He would never find peace that day for the golden branch of the divine Plate ever shining by its own light.

A pig on the door step.

To live with a poet's mind in a slum of Gadara. Meleager - what daemon of the islands was present at your ill-omened begetting?

To live with a poet's mind in a slum of Gadara or to live with princely Jews his father's friend - a merchant respected - his father again - in the palaces of Syrian princes.

There was no choice - *but a pig on the door step.*

17.

Avaunt pig! Must I sacrifice the script of the
golden Plate to hurl at that pig?

After all, could the script of the golden nigh
falutin high-sounding Plate be put to a better use?

He ignores the script, save to turn it over
with his snout. What devil possesses him?

Well, here is my Gadarene foot then.

A herd of them in the street.

Beyond the stifling dust, someone is shouting.
A voice, more portent than the script of the golden
Plate. Speaking Greek too.

"Be you entered into the sea."

Praise every god of Greek or Hebrew they are gone.

A crowd of the usual slum vandals - and one young
man who is laughing.

A princely stranger and his father, a Jew too.
What cool hands at parting.

Beyond the Zenophiles of this world there is
another Zenophile, beyond the Heliodoras another
Heliodora, beyond the dank, hot and withering roses,
other roses.

A princely stranger and a poet.

I would make him some gift, for his brow was
more **lordly** (though his father was no Greek) than the
Kyllenian Hermes.

I would bind **narcissus** to **narcissus**. I would
**plait** the red violet to the white violet. I would
**break** for you one rose, more red than the wine-cyclamen.
I would bind the **stem** of the **crocus** to the **stem** of the
**wild-hyacinth**, that each might show less lovely about
your brow, Kyllenian Hermes.

19.

Three worlds.

1. World of abstraction: Helios, Athene.

2. Intermediate or Nature world: Pan, the Naiads.

3. World of the uninitiate men and women.

All these worlds are important, equally important.
But we are important only in so far as we become identified
with the highest in ourselves - "our own familiar daemon."

Spirits of a higher world have access into a lower world.
Athene may appear to one in the next lower world. She may
be the companion of a half-god, but she must preserve her
dignity, her Olympian character. Athene perfectly did this.
Therefore the gods accepted and enrolled Odyesseus among the
half-gods and heroes.

But when there was a question of Artemis loosing caste by
her association with the too boorish giant, Orion, the giant
was slain.

However, lest honour should be lacking the Olympian
hierarchy because of this lapse of taste, Orion was after-
wards received among the stars.

It was de rigueur for an Olympian not to appear to a
mortal direct. Therefore Selene who requested this, was
burned to ash.

But we have many records of Naiads, tree and river
spirits, sea spirits and voices of the sea, and Centaurs
holding friendly intercourse with mortals.

We also know that Pan appeared to those in pain or trouble,
not only in dreams but "visibly at mid-day".

Pan appeared at Marathon before all the Greeks. And I know
of witnesses to-day who have had vision of this god.

20.

Normal consciousness, pricks of everyday discomfort, jealousy and despair and various forms of unhappiness that are the invariable accompaniment of any true, deep relationship, all this may be symbolised by a thistle.

There are two ways of escaping the pain and despair of life, and of the rarest, most subtle dangerous and envenoming gift that life can bring us, relationship with another person - love.

One way is to kill that love in one's heart. To kill love - to kill life.

The other way is to accept that love, to accept the snare, to accept the pricks, the thistle.

To accept life - but that is dangerous.

It is also dangerous not to accept life.

To every man and woman in the world it is given at some time or another, in some form or another, to make the choice.

Every man and woman is free to accept or deny life - to accept or reject this questionable gift - this thistle.

But these notes are concerned chiefly with the mental process that is in some form or other the compliment of the life process.

That is to say this thistle - life, love, martyrdom - leads in the end - must lead in the logical course of events - to death, paradise, peace.

That world of death - that is, death to the stings of life, which is the highest life - may be symbolised by the serpent.

The world of vision has been symbolised in all ages by various priestly cults in all countries by the serpent.

In my personal language or vision, I call this serpent a jelly fish.

21.

The serpent - the jelly-fish - the over-conscious mind.

The realisation of this over-conscious world is the
concern of the artist.

But this world is there for everyone.

The minds of men differ but the over-minds are alike.

Our minds, all of our minds, are like dull, little houses,
built more or less alike - a dull little city with rows of little
detached villas, and here and there a more pretentious house,
set apart from the rest, but in essentials, seen from a distance,
one with the rest, all drab, all grey.

Each comfortable little home shelters a comfortable
little soul - and a wall at the back shuts out completely
any communication with the world beyond.

Man's chief concern is keeping his little house warm
and making his little wall strong.

Outside is a great vineyard and grapes and rioting
and madness and dangers.

It is very dangerous.

An enormous moth detached himself from a bunch of
yellow grapes - he seemed stupified with the heat of the
sun - heavy with the sun and his soft belly swollen with
the honey of the grapes, I would have said, for there was
a bead of gold - resinous - that matted the feathers at
his throat.

He fell rather than flew and his great feet scratched
with a faint metallic ring, the side of my golden cup.

He stumbled, awkward and righted himself, clutched the
rim of my cup, waved his antennae feebly.

I would have rescued him but I myself was dizzy with
the heat and the fumes of the golden wine and I heard a

23.

The body - limbs of a tree, branches of a fruit-tree,
the whole body a tree - philosophy of the Toa, philosophy
of the Hebrew, philosophy of the Greek, man identified with
nature, the just man "a tree planted by the rivers", numerous
instances of gods in trees and human beings of peculiar
beauty or grace turned at death as reward of kindliness
into trees, poplar trees, mulberry trees, laurels.

But a man has intellect, brain - a mind in fact, capable
of three states of being, a mind that may be conscious in the
ordinary, scholarly, literal sense of the word, or sub-conscious,
- those sub-conscious states varying in different states of
dream or physical feeling, or illness, delirium or madness, -
a mind, over-conscious as well, able to enter into a whole
life as Leonardo entered, Euripides, the Gallilean with his
baskets and men's faces and Roman coins - the forest hermits
of the Ganges and the painter who concentrated on one tuft
of pine branch with its brown cone until every needle was a
separate entity to him and every pine needle bore to every
other one, a clear relationship like a drawing of a later
mechanical twentieth century bridge-builder.

24.

Lo-fu sat in his orchard in the Ming dynasty, A.D. 184. He sat in his orchard and looked about in a vague, casual way. Against the grey stones of the orchard wall he saw the low branch of an apple tree. He thought, that shoot should have been pruned, it hangs too low. Then as he looked at the straight, tough young shoot, he thought, no, the apples are excellent, so round and firm. Then he went on looking.

It was a shoot of some years growth. Why had it been left untrimmed. Was it some special experiment in grafting the old gardener had undertaken some years ago? Was it by accident that the limb hung there? Then his conscious mind ceased wondering and, being an artist, his intensity and concentration were of a special order and he looked at that fruit branch hanging in the sun, the globes of the apples red, yellow, red with flecks of brown and red, yellow where the two colours merged, and flecks of brown again on the yellow, and green as the round surface curved in toward the stem. He saw the stem, pushed down almost lost in the green hollow. He saw the stem fastened to the tough little branch above. He saw the green brown bark of the stem and he compared it with the darker, stronger bark of the branch. He examined the ridges and the minute black lines that made up the individual surface of that little branch. He went further. There were two leaves, continents to be explored in a leisurely manner lest his mind passing one carelessly from vein to vein, should miss one rib or the small branch of one off-shoot of that exquisite skeleton. And when he knew the skeleton of that leaf, the rivers, as it were, furrowing that continent, his mind was content. But it had only begun its search. Between each river there lay a fair green field - many, many little fields each with an individuality, each with some definite feature setting it apart from every other little plot.