Sacred Art

What is sacred art?
In her book, "The Mystical Now: Art and the Sacred," Wendy Beckett suggests that sacred art causes an intimate, direct experience where "our humanity responds to something greater than itself yet intimately part of us." (p.14)
It is not an artist's choice to depict the sacred; he/she can only make him/herself available to it through the open-endedness of creative exploration. While some would save the word "visionary" only for the most sacred, sublime art, it should be open to any artist who aspires to create it.

Visionary art is created by those with the compulsion to channel wisdom and light into our shadowed reality. The Visionary artist is humble and receptive to a cosmic life force, and undertakes the discipline necessary to bring it into manifestation. He sees beyond normal reality with clarity: not just symbols, but the meanings behind them. Through a process of self-discovery and transformation, the Visionary artist awakens to the mysteries of reality, and compassionately desires to reveal unto the same realizations, experiences and knowledge.

Sometimes it feels as if one had joined a circus. A colorful troupe of entities At first you know for certain that the whole world is not weird. But slowly the perception starts change. As weirdness gets familiar it does not go away, instead when you become friends with it, it seems to grow and take hold of everything.
Suddenly you can't be quite sure is it the world around you or just you that perceives.

Artists and scientists are uniquely equipped to shape our worldviews and beliefs. The scientific field of cosmology, in particular, is uncovering astounding insights of our place within the universe: insights that can be communicated through art. Cosmology is revealing clearly our opportunity for consciousness to evolve through our human endeavors, and is charging us to act in accordance with these rare opportunities. Both science and art shape structures for us to understand the world, and can induce states of consciousness for us to experience it. When we differentiate the structures from the states of consciousness found in their work, it becomes clear that artists and scientists embark upon the same fundamental human endeavor, yet are using different kinds of languages. They both destroy walls of presumption and ignorance and can inspire us to evolve to realms of consciousness and transcendence.
Cosmology articulates our central role in several specific ways. We are almost exactly at the center of the scale of the physical world: we are midway between the smallest possible scale measured by "Planck's length" (amidst quarks and other subatomic particles), and the biggest scale known: the visible universe, measuring cross-sections of billions of light years of space. So we reside near the center of these two extremes. We are also at the optimal biological scale for brain function. Creatures the size of ants have too limited a number of atoms that compose them, while large creatures like whales have too slow neuronal transmission.


We also are made of the rarest substances of the universe. The cosmos is made of about seventy percent dark energy, twenty-five percent dark matter, and only about five percent normal energy-matter. Within this five percent, only one-thousandth of one percent consists of heavier elements, including the nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon of which we are mostly composed. This makes us the precious jewels of the energy-matter makeup of the universe.

We also exist at the optimal time for observing and understanding our universe on several temporal scales. First, we are on the cusp between the time of decelerating expansion of the universe and when, now, it is beginning to accelerate again. This rare moment allows for the most acute technological observations of distant galaxies. Second, we are in the middle of the age of our solar system. The sun is at about half its life span, implying the Earth is also. Third, we are at the ripest age of the planet. About half a billion years ago, oxygen began to form on our planet, and in another half a billion years, the sun will be hotter and will have boiled all the oceans.

All of this, revealed by observations and calculations of physics, highlights from the scientific perspective the unique and opportune moment in which we exist. These factors show us the astonishing fact that we are composed of the most precious substances of the universe, and exist at the ripest moment for life - especially consciousness - to evolve.


Yet many of our minds are not configured to internalize the messages communicated by science. Despite the findings and breakthroughs, we are still caught up in rampant conflicts between cultures and short-sightedness of our effects on the planet. Many of us do not have the cognitive structure to understand the implications of science and its conclusions. Many of us do not base our worldviews on rationality, and thus are not receptive to scientific arguments. We can argue until the cows come home that overpopulation is spiraling out of control, but too many people have been fixated on having three or more children to rationally consider their implications. Scientific observations increasingly reveal the disastrous effects of pollution and the use of plastics, for example, yet many of us still fail to bring our own reusable bags to the supermarket. The arguments of science, although often clear and concrete to some, do not have the power to directly change the views or actions of many people. We all too often have limited sight.

We require different means to communicate a worldview that is aligned with the revelations of science. Who in society is capable of communicating worldviews through different mediums than science? The artist can help to fulfill this role. Artists, through their ability to speak through visions and symbols, are uniquely equipped to tap into the mythologies that underlie our worldviews and transform our beliefs.. All kinds of forces that direct our actions - our religions, our role models, even our commercials - are contextualized and directed by art.


We are in a vast universe in which the magnitude of scale that we normally experience, from the tiny bugs on the ground to the sun in the sky, is only a minute fraction of the scales of the physical universe. Within each grain of sand, science reveals, are billions of atoms, and within each of them are even smaller subatomic particles. Our entire solar system, science reveals, is only a drop of water within the vast ocean of the cosmic expanse. Humanity itself has only existed for an instant within the ancient history of the cosmos, a mere millisecond within the vast day of cosmic existence. These lessons teach both humility and perspective on our world. They are spiritual revelations, and are applicable to all people regardless of race, sex, so on. Furthermore, these can be expressed through different mediums than science.

The artist is one of the prime human roles that can communicate these messages of science. It is the opportunity of artists, as humans integral to this cosmic endeavor, to offer their energies to awaken others to the insights of science. Science is not necessarily God, but its lessons are divine. Artists can direct their efforts to creating an art, a mythology that is informed by cosmology and yet is captivating to people of all different worldviews and capacities for understanding. Far more people can resonate with an image than can understand a science article. If artists take the responsibility to understand our world with the same rigor as science, we can help communicate it and inspire others to do the same. Humility, scale, responsibility, community...these are all lessons of science that can be powerfully channeled through the conduit of art.


All cosmic information in this article is from:
Nancy Ellen Abrams, Elizabeth Debold, and Joel R. Primack: "Welcome to the Center of the Universe" in What is Enlightenment? Magazine, Issue 40 May-July 2008. They explain how cosmology suggests this fundamental, nearly universal insight of the world's religions, including Christianity, Buddhism, Shamanism, and many others. "We are in the center of the world always, moment after moment," wrote the Zen master, Shunryu Suzuki.