"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."
-The 14th Dalai Lama
'Pog', Saga of the Swamp Thing issue 32
Visual Language
Many sensations completely defy the use of words: experiences, visions, emotions, and the general subconscious. While some types of language are better suited for different ranges of description, other types, like symbols, music, film and art, can capture complex emotions that can be absorbed in unlimited ways. This type of communication presents a completely untapped range of expression and capabilities for interaction. Cultural specialist Terence McKenna describes this communication: "Culture replaces authentic feeling with words. As an example of this, imagine an infant lying in its cradle, and the window is open, and into the room comes something, marvelous, mysterious, glittering, shedding light of many colors, movement, sound, and the child is enthralled and then the mother comes into the room and she says to the child, "that's a bird, baby, that's a bird," instantly all mystery is gone, the child learns this is a bird, and by the time we're five or six years old all the mystery of reality has been carefully tiled over with words."
McKenna continues to say that the use of words disempowers perception, while visual language strengthens it. In these moments, speech is not heard with the ears, but beheld with the eyes. Shakespeare gave his insights on these phenomena in his play Hamlet, where he says: "For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." In this way, language creates a barrier when everything one can perceive is filtered into words. To get around this, imagery or metaphors (language devices often used in poetry) can convey abstract and intangible experiences.
McKenna continues: "All our metaphors of clarity of speech are visual metaphors. We say, 'I see what you mean, he spoke clearly.'" He then began constructing the best metaphor to describe the next level of cultural communication. This would be the animal to replace the industrial era's "iron horse." After compiling vast amounts of research, he chose the Octopus family, introducing the idea in one of his later speeches:
"What interested me was their linguistic organization. They are virtually entirely nervous system. First of all, they have eight arms in the case of the octopods, and ten arms in the case of the squid, the decapods. So coordinating all these organs of manipulation has given them a very capable nervous system as well as a highly evolved ocular system. But what is really interesting about them is that they communicate with each other by changing the color and texture of their skin and their physical shape. They have a vast repertoire of traveling bars, dots, blushes, merging pastels, herringbone patterns, tweeds, mottled this-and-thats, can blush from apricot through teal into dove gray and on to olive -- do all of these things communicating to each other. That is what their large optical system is for. It is to be able to see each other. They can change the texture of the skin surface: can make it rugose, smooth, lobed, rubbery, runneled, so forth and so on. And then, of course, being shell-less mollusks, they can hide arms, and display certain parts of themselves and carry on a dance."
"By being able to communicate visually, they have no need of a 'conventionalized' culturally reinforced dictionary. Rather, they experience pure intent of each other without ambiguity because each octopus can see what is meant -- this is very important -- can see what is meant. And I think that this heralds a transformation in our own definitions of
language and communication. What we need is to see what we mean."
Ingeniously, McKenna has created this model for a goal to reach for current and future generations, after his passing in 2000. The most basic level of visual communication is wearing logos, patches, t-shirts, bumper stickers, symbols, other apparel, and body language. Art, a more complex form of visual communication, can be totally infused with positive emotion to express the magnitude of what loving warmth can accomplish. This type of emotional metaphor is discussed at length in previous posts about Psycho and Mandalas.
Artist Robert Venosa describes multi-faceted communication: "Any powerful work of art will transmit the love, dedication and energies of the artist who created it, and will enter the viewer at a depth equal to that from whence it came. Be that as it may, as an artist, I paint to discover who I am."
The trouble with visual language arises when distinguishing between visual language with no meaning and those with very specific meaning. Fortunately, organizations with incredible visual appeal often succeed in conveying their ideas. Avidya Collective Change
"When you wear our shirts you make a statement, one that can be spiritual, inspiring, motivational, or one that makes people conscious of a certain social struggle."
Avidya's visual arsenal
Emotional Language
The Dalai Lama is known to be extremely warm and happy around anyone that sees him. Wishing to spread his good vibrational capabilities to the world, he collaborated with a physician named Howard Cutler in his book The Art of Happiness. He explains the roots of being happy come from a state of calm tranquility:
"Having a calm or peaceful state of mind doesn't mean being totally spaced out or completely empty. Peace of mind or a calm state of mind is rooted in affection and compassion. There is a very high level of sensitivity and feeling there."
The Dalai Lama expands on the importance of empathy, or selflessly
understanding and pretending to experience the circumstances of others:
"I would regard a compassionate, warm, kindhearted person as healthy. If you maintain a feeling of compassion, loving kindness, then something automatically opens your inner door. Through that, you can communicate much more easily with other people. And that feeling of warmth creates a kind of openness."
Simply put, happiness is rooted in the conscious choices made by a person,
It is a built-in adapting function of the human brain. Cutler writes:
"The systematic training of the mind-the cultivation of happiness, the genuine inner transformation by deliberately selecting and focusing on positive mental states and challenging negative mental states-is possible because of the very structure and
function of the brain - hardwired with certain instinctual behavior patterns
in ways that enable us to survive."
Amanda Sage's art is entirely centered on transmitting warm emotions: affection, softness, kindness, and love. Whether made clear at first glance or used as a mandala meditation, her art captures the universal power and energy of caring. According to A Dictionary of Symbols, "To love is to experience a force which urges the lover toward a given center."
When the basics of compassionate caring are reached, the desire to transcend words and language culminates to a new level of empathetic emotion: Limbic Resonance.
"Limbic Resonance" by Amanda Sage
The Limbic system in the brain is the collection of brain centers that manage behavior and emotion. Most mammals and other animals have the brain structures necessary for feeling empathy towards other creatures. As communicated through the vibrant and nurturing brushstrokes, Limbic Resonance can be considered a symphony of mutual exchange between two animals that recognize the inner state of one another. These are the feelings when maintaining kindness opens one's "inner door" as the Dalai Lama describes. Using primarily eye contact and emotional cues, limbic resonance can become a form of harmonious subconscious communication. While some movies only offer moments of limbic resonance, Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo is a psychological thriller based entirely around the failure of achieving non-verbal connections - and consequently spiraling toward disaster.
"Vertigo"
"Vertigo: A feeling of dizziness... A swimming in the head... figuratively a state in which all things seemed to be engulfed in terror." These words open the 1958 trailer of Vertigo, one of the most heavily debated movies in history of Hollywood. The first time watching it is like exactly like the definition of the word - leaving audiences in a miasma state of complex emotions. Detective Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) and the woman of his greatest desire, Madeline (Kim Novak) are so engrossed in their obsessions that they are never able to achieve the pure, sustaining love necessary for fulfillment. Concerned more with their own personal ideas about identity rather than each others' true identities, they fail to reveal their honesty and vulnerability, which would allow room for the empathetic language of love to enter. Scottie, who has an intense fear of heights, is called upon by an old college friend Gavin Elster to save Elster's wife Madeline from her re-curring trances of wanting to uncover the past about her grandmother and attempt to kill herself. After Scottie fails to help Madeline when his vertigo problems arise, he is consumed by loss and guilt to the point of making a woman that looks eerily similar to Madeline, named Judy, to wear the clothes and hairstyle that Madeline wore. Actually, this story has been told before in countless forms, most notably in the ancient Greek myth of Eurydice. After Orpheus falls in love with Eurydice, she dies from being stung by a poisonous serpent, and Orpheus goes to desperate lengths to retrieve her from the underworld. After getting his chance, he succumbs to the fear of turning around (heights, in the case of Scottie) and is immediately incinerated. In both the opening title sequence and a cartoon journey halfway through the film, the rotating spirals and the spiral twist in both Madeline's hair and her dead grandmother's, instruct the audience that these are cyclical patterns of reactions, obsession and emotion.
"Vertigo"
"Vertigo: A feeling of dizziness... A swimming in the head... figuratively a state in which all things seemed to be engulfed in terror." These words open the 1958 trailer of Vertigo, one of the most heavily debated movies in history of Hollywood. The first time watching it is like exactly like the definition of the word - leaving audiences in a miasma state of complex emotions. Detective Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) and the woman of his greatest desire, Madeline (Kim Novak) are so engrossed in their obsessions that they are never able to achieve the pure, sustaining love necessary for fulfillment. Concerned more with their own personal ideas about identity rather than each others' true identities, they fail to reveal their honesty and vulnerability, which would allow room for the empathetic language of love to enter. Scottie, who has an intense fear of heights, is called upon by an old college friend Gavin Elster to save Elster's wife Madeline from her re-curring trances of wanting to uncover the past about her grandmother and attempt to kill herself. After Scottie fails to help Madeline when his vertigo problems arise, he is consumed by loss and guilt to the point of making a woman that looks eerily similar to Madeline, named Judy, to wear the clothes and hairstyle that Madeline wore. Actually, this story has been told before in countless forms, most notably in the ancient Greek myth of Eurydice. After Orpheus falls in love with Eurydice, she dies from being stung by a poisonous serpent, and Orpheus goes to desperate lengths to retrieve her from the underworld. After getting his chance, he succumbs to the fear of turning around (heights, in the case of Scottie) and is immediately incinerated. In both the opening title sequence and a cartoon journey halfway through the film, the rotating spirals and the spiral twist in both Madeline's hair and her dead grandmother's, instruct the audience that these are cyclical patterns of reactions, obsession and emotion.
After Madeline 'becomes' Judy, the audience is engulfed in the sea of possibilities: Is she an immediate reincarnation? A hallucination of Scottie's guilt? A look-alike he was meant to embrace? The process of disillusionment keeps recurring: feeling the sensations of vertigo, desperately following his loves, the manic nature of the music soundtrack, in some scenes, the use of fog creates a feeling of dreamlike wandering. At first, Judy wants to disregard Scottie, but Scottie is hell-bent to restore his guilt and lost love. Judy then decides to be this make-shift image of Madeline if it means having Scottie's love. The gripping and mind-blowing scenes that follow lead them to the place of Madeline's death - the bell tower monastery. Scottie must re-enact the situation that led to Madeline's death, but this time he must save her. At the moment of conquering his fear of heights, he pins Madeline against the wall and aggressively explains his theory about the first murder. In a final moment of clarity between them, a shadowy figure approaches them in the bell tower and says "I hear voices." The uncertainties of identity is the recurring downfall of the characters, and so naturally, Judy screams before falling off the tower.
Vertigo is a challenge for the audience to develop limbic resonance. Because the characters are so psychologically engrossed in desire, guilt, repressions, illusions, subconscious projections, and other manifestations of fantasy, nobody can be truly sure what the characters are fully thinking at any given moment. That's how Hitchcock preferred to film his movies: with brilliant emotional and symbolic narratives that overshadow the surface or 'dialogue-driven' narratives. Just as Scottie is captivated by the beauty and likeness of Madeline, so are the confused audience members captivated by the fascination the develops with identity and Scottie's twisted fixation with curing his guilt-stricken behavior.
Vertigo is known as one of Hitchcock's most personal, no-holds-barred films. He even instructed the actors "Don't act. No acting." The visual language in his films challenges the audience to decode the thorough ranges of human emotion within. The audience is as much apart of the movie as the characters are themselves! Hitchcock's mark on cinematic history is undoubtedly one of the greatest.
Mainstream films have yet to depict the human aura and energy field that is recordable by biofeedback aura imaging technology devices. These pictures give evidence to what Manly P. Hall describes as "semi-visible electric force which pour through the surface of the skin
of every human being at all times during his life." The online Aura-Imaging site uses biofeedback aura imaging technology to record the colors and wavelengths emanating through humans. This is the energetic life force and harmonious relationship with the sun's light. The term 'good vibrations' applies to more than just music. It is the embracing 'limbic resonance' with other sentient life, cultivated through kindness. As Avidya Collective Change concludes in their mission statement: "Our messages are uplifting, we project nothing but positivity, for we all have an impact in the collective aura, and that's the energy we want to fill it with."
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