Art Quote "Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike."Margot Fonteyn This photo was provided by my Friends Sean and Beatriz, who are the subjects of an essay about Taurians on this website.
It was taken in London, more on this soon (when their little daughter tells me the story of this building as she is had to do a project for school, and her version is the best one... I will explain where you can go to experience this, if you do not already recognise it).
At any rate, it reminds me of a shell's inside the photo makes it appear almost flat... and then of course you realise how deep it spirals. I have so many friends who have contemplated a spiral staircase in their homes, how different it appears to them to make them appear... how 'cool will they look' to others... and how impressed others will be with this difference... As if a spiral staircase will imbue levels of spiralling depths to their otherwise materialistic square angles.
Then how puffed up and sweaty, they do appear when they have to try and get a double mattress up the stairs... or a dressing table... and let's not forget a new bath room tub!
I love the way that this staircase reminds me of imaginative, conscientious Hitchcock films, and there is a kind of exaggerated twist to it, that makes me think of the nursery rhyme... 'There was a crooked house...'
Or a man that decided to climb it when he was four years and as he climbed with stinging knuckles, from which his wedding ring slipped back down to chime like a small falling bell ringing as it disappeared below, whilst he disintegrated to become the final step where his bones crumbled like talc. At each turn he abandoned his secrets in captivity, and only his soul climbed the final steps to Xanadu.
It reminds me of the silver embroidered spirals that were intricately woven and sown into a stunning pale orchid green white, organza cushion, which alway tempted me to sleep, only to wake up and discovered my face was indented with it's sharp imprint, and scratched from the sequins...
Giddy, twists and swivels.... anticipating each turn, and awakening the senses as the smells change from the dark damp to the fresh smog of London as you reach the top...glinting sunlight, through the cracks in an old oak door.
Then a single spidar web thread that faded up into the clouds, through the dark rich...Pthalo blue sky, although it was tied to the door handle, and at the other end a god's aching tooth was waiting to be pulled.
It reminds me of how inneficient such a staircase is for actually it is many times longer to travel along ... when it is convoluted like this, coiled like the inside of a snake, perhaps it is Shiva's snake...
Yesterday morning, for the first time in my life I had a spectacular vision, or dream or something else that I cannot define in words... That beautiful, elegant Shiva awoke and bathed in the Ganges, and as he washed his face, in the perfect stillness of the river which was absolutely still as if frozen — around him, and yet only where he dipped his face... it changed colour to burnished gold and white silver until he lifted his face out of the water and shook his head dry... Yet everyplace else it rushed with renewed passion. From his coiled hair at the top of his head, there was a silver sliver of water cascading down past his eyebrow and as it fell it become more fierce, and as it reached his waist it was as if a faucet was turned on hard. As it fell into the water around him the colour changed to liquid silver, gold all the colours of metals heated white...
On the banks beside him was a giant king Cobra... (My father always dreamt of snakes throughout his life as a young man, and always told us of his recurrent dream)...
A snake who opened his mouth once he had paid homage with gentle humility to our God, and this was what Shiva showed me inside the Snake... I was instructed by Shiva (he put out his hand in its direction as if showing me the way) to walk into it, and within the coiled staircase, my feet which were bare, felt the saliva of the snake eroding the sins of my worldly transactions, physical, emotional, material and past memory, as I did so I felt myself slide down the remainder which was uncurled and out to the sea... I landed softly, with my feet ahead of me there on a small white sand beach. I felt myself sitting cross-legged with my knees close to my shoulders, where I could see each kneecap.
I saw Shiva's smile across the fierce tangerine golden horizon, it stretched across the entire sky, it's edges of golden pink slivers and silver ... and thought it was fine to be the small child I appeared to be, for my knees which have many scars from battles past were entirely healed, so I must have been under four, since from that point onwards the permanent lifelong scars appeared... Scars that I carry with a slight vanity and pride I am afraid. I knew then that there was an after-life or some call it reincarnation, that it would come and it was inescapable. I knew that those who were released into that phenomena, could not fathom it prior to it, and no matter how many deaths one experiences in Life that moment which will come is itself the greatest secret and mystery we discover for ourselves.
I discovered what UG couldn't find in his own lifetime, either the first or the second...
You can obsess about enlightenment or intellectualise via academic disciplines and search many lifetimes but all of it is man's need to make sense of 'non'-sense... And possibly dismissal of what cannot be understood. In the moment when I was standing before Shiva, and the direction I was given, and then the rebirth, and then the experience without ever having saught enlightenment directly, or indirectly, and then discovering only the phenomena was profound, it was simply nothing to do with the religions that have mystified us away from what really is God. I simply understood what lies ahead of me, and my own affinity with GOD. Enlightenment does not change you, yet the clarity that defines you, reconstructs you - if you are an idiot you become a defined idiot... if you were an aetheist, upon enlightenment, your atheism becomes more deeply ingrained and defined... If you were questioning the existence of God then enlightenment leaves you more bewildered... It is like this, if you were a seed with a destructive seed within it, then the sun would allow you to blossom as a poisonous flower... Enlightenment is purely a moment of sunshine. Every thinking being has enlightening experiences, most individuals do not define it as such nor look for any special meaning within... We leave that to the 'artists, (such as I) philosophers, and spiritual academics... etc'.
What I know is that when U.G Krishnamurti, will go over to the 'other side', everything became will become clear and most of all the existence of God. Though he will then have no opportunity to share this. In his second awakening he was given every chance to see the miracle of life, and what he discovered fell far short of a miracle it became semantical discourses defining the meanings and motivations of living, and dying, futilities of questioning and most of all his narratives of beautiful systematic logic. He himself lived an austere life witnessing many unusual experiences or events. When his own body carried the wounds of those he clear loved, he offered no explanation other than pointing to the wounds.
I like all those who can love - find it easy to love him through the words I read of him and the direct communication with one who was living with him at the time being a witness to his life.
He always appears to me a child prodigy, who has discovered mathematics and the logics that drive it, and then can relate everything back to such logic. It is simply a beautiful construction and deconstruction of what is in the mind. In his mind, he has discovered his own thinking system, at times crabby, and insolent to the rest of the world, yet in private always respectful of those vulnerable individuals who seek refuge to him. He is superb in both his defiance but also his love of being surrounded by 'questioners/seekers', who he may lightly rebuke with love, humour. I wish it had been him instead of me who had experienced 'Shiva'.
God loves us unconditionally, only the very few love God in return unconditionally requiring nothing more than purely being, that is the true purpose of man. 'I think therefore I am', therefore resonates clearly as what 'being' actually means.
What if a tower and staircase were made entirely of ice, like a palatial ice castle, in Iceland... imagine how breathtaking it would be to climb it's slippery sides, in anticipation of seals that may have been above or below smiling back at you, with their beautiful eyes.
It reminds me of a sombre, isolated lighthouse inside... when the Triffids were a horrific alien plant that was about to be overthrown by the ocean's salty composition.... I feel as if life is often a battle with the Triffids, and yet we were always surrounded by spiritual consciousness, devoid of any ritualistic 'smoke and mirrors', bullshit, but clear, beautiful serenity and yes there is a purpose... Not as one devoid of hope but one of just BEING receptive to God. Not in a religious way that manifests itself with pleading prayer, but by a simple comprehension that we are required to exist purely to express ourselves and therefore, to discover the self for ourselves.
