FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Arun Iyer (TE - EXTC - KJSOMAIYA)

Recently, or you can say just now I have been studying the various artistic development of our century and the centuries gone by.

But there is this one particular which has caught my imagination more than anything I have ever assimilated before called "Surrealist Art" it deals with the powers of the subconscious mind and it concerned consciously evoking the subconscious.

If we try to chalk down human scientific and technology development we find that it has been only a handful of enlightened individuals, namely scientists, mathematicians who have provided the genuine pathbreakers

The surrealists persevered for progress in art. The scientists persevered for progress in science, progress in technology.

When both this genres defined progress they defined it for their respective fields. But only progress in the latter has some impact in our standard of living.

Let us analyze the term "progress". What do we mean by progress? By progress do we mean progress of art, progress of science? By progress we certainly mean progress of humankind to be more specific progress of human mind. We have to conclude that the "progresses" mean the same underlining the basic need for advancements in thought, word and action.

The surrealists had ways in which they could invoke the subconscious mind and their works were certainly not terrestrial. The works of artists like Salvador Dali and Roberto Matta appear to be illustrations of alien civilizations, to think very crudely. But then, consistent study will certainly reveal that these are mental maps which when decoded may certainly give us gold.

When the artist forcibly inculcates paranoia, he is in a trance, he is open to his subconscious mind, but he is physically conscious of the fact. His physical body is just a camera, which photographs the subconscious mental map in color by hand. This was what Salvador Dali invented.

The surrealists have their own ideological base for progress. In their endeavor to unearth the mystics of the mind they always tended to portray the following complexities.

1. Convulsive beauty: The beauty that emerges from a conflict between extreme movement and complete immobility.

2. Objective Chance: The sum total of the coincidences that control a destiny.

3. Black Humor: The form of humor, which because of its tragic undertone, it constitutes poetic terrorism.

4. Extravagant love: This result in each surrealist work porting the female as a guardian goddess.

The first two concepts appear to be closely related to scientific and mathematical preambles. It appears great minds lend to speak a language quite similar to each other.

What is now evident is that these concepts are creations of a highly analytical mind of someone who may have developed to the level of say Albert Einstein but in a completely different field, if the reader can grasp the inner idea.

The mental make of brilliant minds, working for different goals may appear different. But are the mental makeups different? Are the goals different? If we are able to interpret them in a common language, the language of the mind, they may be one and the same, the secret to the formation of a sublime human civilization.

What do we mean by "language of the mind"? In a very crude sense it may mean an understandable pattern of sublime consciousness which may also include the subconscious. What do we mean by sublime consciousness? We define sublime consciousness to include the intelligence of highly analytical beings, namely the "geniuses" of different fields. The understandable pattern may be something like an EEG, as we have already discussed, a mental map.

As of now the progress of humankind has been triggered only by the scientific community. Geniuses from other fields have had little or no part to play in this effort. So we may have received only part of the secret.

Will the integration of superior human intelligence under the "common language" yield us the entire secret? The answer to this question certainly lies with us.