Order of the Mind

Oil on canvas, 48 X 60 inches, 1983

Order of the Mind, a color filled, swirl of interconnecting filaments with a central burst of energy is reminiscent of the anatomy of a cellular synapse.

Order of the Mind evolved from my near-death-experience in 1982. While sleeping one night I stopped breathing and slowly became aware of my mind and body’s need for air. My mind developed a dream derived from the incoming information concerning the state of my being. I became aware of my entire circulatory system and its connection to all of my cells. This was followed by an awareness of cellular energy levels and their need for oxygen and other nutrients. It felt as though I slowly became aware of the energy fields around my body, those of my wife lying next to me, the air in the room and the walls and furniture. As time went on the picture in my brain began to glow and I saw the waves of energy rolling about. It was beautiful and I wanted to see it more clearly. My mind’s eye wanted to get closer but my subconscious began telling me that I would die if I did not turn away. I became aware that I was asleep and started to repeatedly tell myself that I had to wake up or I would die. Finally I woke up gasping for air and with my heart racing faster than I have ever experienced.

This experience demonstrated to me the incredible power of the mind and has transformed my view of “spiritual experiences”. I am now convinced that many people throughout time have had such experiences and have been misguided in attributing them to metaphysical sources. Light and color are not of the world beyond itself, but rather are the manifestations of our bio-evolutionary mechanisms for measuring specific electromagnetic spectral wavelengths. The mind has the incredible ability to turn its perspective inwardly for self-assessment and to employ processes developed for making sense of the physical world to create a dynamic representation of its own interior for its own purposes.

The production of Order of the Mind occupied me for the entire year following the above described experience. What I painted is just a small view of the much larger experience of my mind I had that night.