Y GA RESEARCHThe Yoga Research Society Newsletter Number 34 April – September 2005

What is Visionary Art?by Alex Grey

Alex Grey will appear November 5, 2005 at the 31st annual Yoga Research Society Conference

The artist’s mission is to make the soulperceptible. Our scientific, materialistculture trains us to develop the eyes of outerperception. Visionary art encourages thedevelopment of our inner sight. To findthe visionary realm, we use the intuitiveinner eye: The eye of contemplation; theeye of the soul. All the inspiring ideas wehave as artists originate here.

The visionary realm embraces the entirespectrum of imaginal spaces – from heavento hell, from the infinitude of forms toformless voids. The psychologist JamesHillman calls it the imaginal realm. PoetWilliam Blake calls it the divineimagination. The aborigines call it thedreamtime; and Sufis call it alam al-mithal.To Plato, this was the realm of the idealarchetypes. The Tibetans call it thesambhogakaya – the dimension of innerrichness. Theosophists refer to the astral,mental, and nirvanic planes ofconsciousness. Carl Jung knew this realmas the collective symbolic unconscious.Whatever we choose to call it, the visionaryrealm is the space we visit during dreamsand altered or heightened states ofconsciousness.

Every sacred art tradition begins with thevisionary. “Divine canons of proportion,”mystic syllables, and sacred writing wereall realized when the early wisdom mastersand artists received the original archetypesthrough visionary contact with the divineground. After a sacred archetype has beengiven form as a work of art, it can act as afocal point of devotional energy. Theartwork becomes a way for viewers to accessor worship the associated transcendentaldomain. In sacred art, from calligraphy toicons, the work itself is a medium: a pointof contact between the spiritual andmaterial realms.

Our inner world – the life of our imaginationwith its intense feelings, fears, and loves –guides our intentions and actions in the world.Our inner world is the only true source ofmeaning and purpose we have. Art is thesong of this inner life. Art’s key role in thehuman drama is that of a “great convincer.”The artist posits one myth, religion, orideology over another, yet also alwaysexpresses the raw passion and evolutionaryforce of the inner world itself.

The artist attempts to make inner truthsvisible, audible, or sensible in some way,by manifesting them in the external,material world (through drawing, painting,

song, etc). To produce their finest works,artists lose themselves in the flow ofcreation from their inner worlds. Thevisionary artist creatively expresses her orhis personal glimpses of the DivineImagination.

Every work of art embodies the vision ofits creator and simultaneously reveals afacet of the collective mind. Art historyshows each successive wave of visionflowing through the world’s artists. Artists offer the world the pain and beautyof their souls as a gift to open the eyes ofthe collective and heal it. Our exposure totechnological innovations and diverseforms of sacred art gives artists at the dawnof the twenty-first century a uniqueopportunity to create more integrative anduniversal spiritual art than ever before.

Excerpted from an essay by Alex Grey, What is Visionary Artat www.alexgrey.com

Paintings by Alex Greyfrom Sacred Mirrors:

The Visionary Art of Alex Grey

“Praying”

Photo by Eli Morgan

“Journey of the Wounded Healer (panel III)”

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The true work of art is but ashadow of the divine perfection. Michelangelo