The
Hidden Sphere
(of Artistic Concerns) Cecil Orion
Touchon
Number 1
1)
The reality that can be described is not the truest Reality. (1)
2)
It is our nature to name and to categorize things.
3)
Yet, the description of a thing remains only a description; it is not the
thing that it describes.(2)
4)
Therefore, truest reality remains nameless, uncategorized, descriptionless.
Though
nameless, all things named arise and take their being from this nameless
state.
5)
In order to experience this truest reality one must forsake name.
6)
Only when one has forgotten name can one experience this nameless state.
7)
As individuals we have desires there is no denying it!
8)
But in our desiring we are lost in the delusion of description and category.
9)
We forget our true being, our nameless nature.
10)
The real lives within the dreamer, the dreamer within the real. (3)
11)
Realize this simple truth and you will have the key to understanding.
12)
Our individual self, our named person arises from our nameless being. (4)
footnotes
(1) "The starting point for my work is from the
inexplicable, from the divine."
Jean Arp,
quoted in Michael Seuphor, The World of Abstract Art
(New York: Wittenborn, 1957)
“I can well imagine a religion in which
there are no doctrines, so that nothing is spoken. Clearly, then, the essence
of religion can have nothing to do with what is sayable.
“… Words such as truth, art, veracity, or anything are stupid in
themselves. Of course, its difficult to formulate so I insist every word
I am telling you now is stupid and wrong.”
(2) "I discovered
the world through language, and for a long time I mistook language
for the world" Jean Paul Sartre
(3) The Sutra says, “To behold
the Buddha nature you must wait for the right moment and the right conditions.
When the time comes, you are awakened as from a dream. You realize that
what you have found is your own and doesn’t come from anywhere outside.”
An ancient patriarch said, “After enlightenment you are still as you were
before. There is no mind and no truth,” You are simply free from unreality
and delusion. The ordinary person’s mind is the same as the sage’s, because
Original Mind is perfect and complete in itself. When you have arrived
at this recognition, please hold on to it.
(4) “What I want to show in my
work is the idea which hides itself behind so-called reality. I am seeking
for the bridge which leads from the visible to the invisible, like the
famous cabalist who once said: “If you wish to get hold of the invisible
you must penetrate as deeply as possible into the visible." My aim is always
to get hold of the magic of reality and to transfer this reality into painting--
to make the invisible through reality. It may sound paradoxical, but it
is, in fact, reality which forms the mystery of our existence... In my
opinion all important things in art... have always originated from the
deepest feeling about the mystery of being. Self-realization is the urge
of all objective spirits. It is the self for which I am searching in my
life and in my art... As we still do not know what this self really is,
this self in which you and I in our various ways are expressed, we must
peer deeper and deeper into this discovery. For the self is the great veiled
mystery of the world... I believe in it and in its eternal, immutable form.
Its path is, in some strange and peculiar manner, our path. And for this
reason I am immersed in the phenomenon of the Individual, the so-called
whole Individual, and I try in every way to explain and present it. What
are you? What am I? Those are the questions that constantly persecute and
torment me and perhaps also play some part in my art.”
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