Beauty is the Indicator

Beauty Is the Indicator

by John Compaglia

I cannot but help looking at beauty as an indicator of the significance and coherence in life. By significance I simply mean that there is meaning, sense, and purpose in this life. I do not mean to be making any argument for the truth or reality of the idea of Creative Design. I am just pointing to the fact that in the end all things point towards order, coherence, and beauty. This is a rather big statement to make, but I will stand behind it and show you why.

When one writes a poem one is not in total control of the poem. Often, Gary Snyder once said, all a poet does is caste out his or her line and wait for something to bite. There is an undeniable logic behind poetry which cannot be explained by the conscious mind. Now this seems like a contradiction because when most of us think of logic we think of a statement thoughtfully reasoned out and articulated by the conscious mind based on concrete experience and evidence. Yet why is it that a poem can come to us in its entirety without any initial conscious effort on our own part? After the initial inspiration the poet may use his conscious intelligence, his or her knowledge of grammar, punctuation, etc., to smooth over the rough edges of the poem but the fact is that initially a poem comes from some mysterious source in our unconscious mind.

It could certainly be argued that the reason we are able to write a poem of haunting beauty and coherence with out consciously formulating it is because our intention to write a poem was so strong that we manifested it. I would not deny this as part of the process in the writing of poems. I think that the will and desire to write a poem or a novel are certainly an integral part in the creation of the work of art. The mind is a powerful instrument and when we want something, whether the want is conscious, unconscious, or partially both the mind more often then not will find a way to make manifest that which it desires.

Yet this is only the beginning of the process. The other fact that we must take into consideration is that the unconscious mind has a logic and coherence completely of its own. I feel that I can say this with assuredness because how else could a poem come out in its entirety with out any conscious formulation. The duality we must do away with here is the idea that there is a vast cleft between the conscious and unconscious mind for these so called two-minds are really part of One Mind. The unconscious could not be made manifest with out the conscious mind for the unconscious needs a platform to be known on and the conscious mind is precisely this platform. At the same time the conscious mind is more often then not simply those small parts of the unconscious, at any given moment, which awareness has brought to the forefront of our attention.

It would be better to not speak of an unconscious mind and a conscious mind, but rather simply say the conscious and the unconscious. The two aspects of the mind are inextricably interconnected with one another. If we were to pictorially represent the conscious and the unconscious aspects of the mind we would not have a sphere with half painted black or blue (the unconscious) and the other half painted yellow or white (the conscious aspect of them mind).It would be more correct to paint a sphere yellow and blue, or black and white, mixed together. Now these colors are significant in and of them selves. I choose the colors I did because in psychological terms these colors are those often used to represent the conscious and the unconscious.

If one mixes the colors yellow and blue together, what do they get? The answer is green. Green is the color of nature and we must always remember that the psyche is natural; it is as natural as a tree or wind blowing in the breeze. Our life always exists in nature, and by “in nature” I mean embedded within nature, inseparable from nature. In other words, we are nature experiencing itself through the medium of self-consciousness in embodied form. On the other hand, if we mix the colors of black and wit together we get grey. Grey is often representative of that space in between any two opposite poles, as in seen in the common phrase “This is a real grey area.” Much of our life is lived in this grey area. We can call it ambiguity. Certainly we need to make definite decisions in our life, but as far as the ultimate questions go we are never quite sure of where we stand or what the correct answer is. Even if we formulate an explanation to describe why we feel what we feel, or think what we think, there is always the lurking feeling that we have not quite explained ourselves adequately enough, that we have left something, some vital perspective or detail, out. So really, the best way to picture the mind is as an undivided whole consisting of conscious and unconscious components that interact wit one another.

Let us continue with our explanation of how poetry is an example of the inherent beauty, order, and coherence of life. There is forever a mass/mess of thoughts circling around in our minds. For most of us, most of the time, it is difficult to get anything discernable out of this confused mind of ours. That is why we often place so much attention on the actions of a person because at least in ones actions we can see a concrete representation of their mental states. Often times an action cannot fully explain the intentions of a person, for often times a person is confused or scared and they do not know how to act in a way that is in accordance with their deepest desires or wishes. The action is simply a manifestation of the confused desires, wishes, fears, phobias, and neuroses of the individual. In some extreme cases we even see people who are in such a state of disconnect that they cannot make any decision or action whatsoever.

Yet the fact that poetry can be produced from even an extremely depressed, confused, and demented mind seems to me to show that there is an intelligence at work in the cosmos which transcends our individual confusion and indecision. The way a poem can mix allusion, metaphor, foreshadowing, symbols, and a variety of other subtle qualities is amazing. It is fascinating how the language a poem expresses itself in is often far more subtle and beautiful then the language we normally speak. It seems far more like an ancient language. Maybe this is why Plato spoke of poets as instruments whom the gods use to express their messages, even if the poet is not sure what exactly they are saying when the inspiration hits them. Yet don’t be fooled by Plato’s insinuation that poets are often just the puppets of the gods. For a true poet who stays with his or her craft over the course of a lifetime will go forever deeper into the meaning and process of their interactions with the muse(s).

A poet’s logic might not be as literal and exact as the logician’s ideas, but you can almost guarantee the poet will touch on far deeper truths then the dry witted logician ever will. At the same time, I do not mean to say that the poet’s ideas will be murky and non-sensical. Many times the essays a poet writes are far more exquisite then those of the dry philosopher. The poet’s poems have a way of touching a person on emotional, intuitive, and visionary levels, even if one cannot do an exact literal-linear reading of the language. There are poets who take more sustained effort and penetrating insight to understand, William Blake for example. This is as it should be though because one who is trying to describe deep-imaginal realities, which can be described best in symbols, is confronted with the difficult task of trying to convey in written form poetic deep psychic realities to a world that has largely lost its sense of awe, mystery, and magic.

In no way do I mean to undermine the forces of chaos and dissolution in this life by giving primacy to order, coherence, and beauty. These forces of confusion and dissolution are absolutely normal and necessary in life. Yet it is uncanny the way the way life seems to move towards order and beauty. Just look at nature. Look at how all of the species in a wild environment work with one another for the continued health and survival of the particular ecological niche. Also, why is it that looking at a grove of giant redwood trees inspires such awe in us? We could easily say that the ideas of beauty and order are just human fabrications and that in reality life is just the conglomeration of random events that we humans strain ourselves to create meaning out of because we are too scared to face the idea that maybe our life doesn’t have any reason, rhyme, or purpose at all. Yet to state an idea such as this is another silly things us human love to do.

We love to set up dualities such as reality and illusion. We would like to think that the world of nature, which we are a part of by the way, is meaningless and it is just us humans who have to make sense out of this world we live in. Of course the logical contradiction in this statement is the idea that we can separate our consciousness, our life, from nature, and then speak for what is human-made and what is not. For if it is a fabrication for humans to think that because they feel something inside of themselves that it can overlaid on non-human reality, then it is equally a fabrication to think that we can speak for non-human nature, define what it is and isn’t and what it is and is not capable of, from our limited human subjectivity.

Behind all of this is the direct experience of beauty. It is undeniable that when we come upon beautiful natural scenery we are awe struck. This is no overlaying of our search for meaning onto the natural world. This is a psycho-physical response to the beauty that is life. In fact, the lack of such a response in an appropriate situation is a dangerous cultural pathology that we face today. The fact that we increasingly feel the need to destroy the wild places of the earth to make room for the expansion of maddened industrial and materialist instincts shows just how far we have gotten from our primordial experience of awe and reverence for life. In reality it is our constant attempt to separate life into dualistic categories that causes our perverse fascination with creating one great machine out of ourselves and the world we live in.