Seven Little Known Birds of the Inner Eye

by Mulk Raj Anand

  During its course downwards, the vagus nerve sends branches to the prevertebral plexus of the sympathetic portion of the autonomic nervous system. In the neck, it sends a branch to the pharyngeal plexus; in the thorax, it sends branches to the deep and superficial cardiac plexus; in the abdomen it forms connections with the plexus of the coccygeal axis, and then ends in the solar plexus. This vital vagus also has connections with the renal, hepatic, splenic and pancreatic plexus. It is the only nerve which is composed of motor and sensory fibers which are both efferent, or outgoing, and afferent, or incoming. The former are inhibitory and anabolic in action, while the latter are catabolic.

  The efferent fibres, which exercise a restraining influence over the actions of the larynx, pharynx, lungs and heart, start from the medulla oblongata and are always kept going by the cerebro-spinal fluid secreted by the moon of the brain, or the lateral ventricles, resembling a crescent moon. These fibres arise from the cells of the ganglion nodosum but, as they enter the bulb, they divide into two branches. Some ascend to arborise with efferent fibres of the bulb above; others go downwards to the solar plexus.

  The efferent fibres of the vagus nerve arise from the solar plexus and its two semilunar ganglia, called the abdominal brain, and reach the vagal centre in the medulla.

  The stimulation of the vagal centre galvanises, either directly or indirectly, both sets of fibres. For instance, it can stimulate the inhibitory action of the efferent, or outgoing, fibres, and restrain the functions of the organs supplied by them, such as the heart, the lungs and the larynx; simultaneously, it can stimulate the accelerating action of these efferent fibres and excite the functions of the organs supplied by them, such as the stomach and intestines, and it can cause dilatation of the blood vessels of the abdominal viscera, resulting in increased secretions of the digestive glands in the abdominal cavity.2

  The depression of the vagal centre can produce the opposite effect in the functions of the organs supplied by the afferent and efferent fibres. Both the actions bring about a kind of see-saw of brain and belly—as the vagal centre is stimulated or depressed.

  Ordinarily the activities of the vagus are automatic and unconscious. But in yoga theories it has been suggested that, by the practice of certain breathing exercises, it is possible to bring it under the control of our will, awaken the serpent power of the sleeping kundalini and initiate the release of dormant insights.

  Many important artists and scientists bear witness to the fact that the human brain can reproduce at will, through concepts, symbols, mathematical theorems and logical systems, the exact likeness of human experience—and also new illuminations based on the transformations of nature, which project our minds into the yet unknown possibilities of creative art. But apart from intensifying awareness, the brain cannot initiate the creative process to any extent. As one has to "gouge one's eyes to paint," according to Picasso, so one must shut one's "theoretic eyes" and release instinct and intuition.

  To be sure, without the evolution of the human brain, the goal-seeking of the nerves, the tendons and the muscles towards further perfection, we would be lacking in direction and the evolution of our sensibilities could not be hoped for.3

  But we must recognize the limitations of our rationalist age. Beyond man's progress in the mastering of his primal instincts and nature, through the end-products already achieved by the functioning of the best human brains and through the conquest of many difficulties and maladjustments in the universe, beyond the healing of disorders and the enrichment of the human personality by insight into the meaning of hitherto unexplained mysteries (and, above all, giving us the key for the search into the meaning of meaning) is the unreleased serpent power.

  Because of the almost omnipresent awareness of the brain, its ceaseless work day and night, and its multipurpose activities, we will call reason the multiheaded bird which arises from the brain's orbit, warning us, with its checks and balances, of dangers on all sides. The brain, however, must ultimately yield to the "gizzard" which digests the materials.

  In seeing a work of art, the brain receives the evidence of the eye and the memory, records the interrogations of the thalamus, is stirred by the vibrations of the rhythms in the spinal cord, with all the interventions from the fantasy world at the deepest sources of human life, accepts or rejects the messages of the heart, the hands, the ears, the nerves, and helps us, with its cautionary signals, to be careful in the organisation of forms.

  Our inner reactions to a work of art are, then, so complex that while the brain is able to put together many impressions, associations, interrelations of hidden responses, social and historical facts and metaphysical considerations, most of these remain merely conceptual, factual or atmospheric information, unless reason is able to connect itself to the integral aesthetic experience in intuition, And we must yield to the vasanas (energies), the vagal centre, the solar plexus, if the serpent power is to be roused.

  Often we are able to isolate the subtlest feelings through the apparatus of the cognitive process. Among other things, reason is able, with the help of the kundalini, the creative and sustaining power, to unravel dreams, fantasies and nuances of awareness. In this way, the quantitative information may be. transformed into qualitative significance, and the apperception of variegated processes of beauty may take place, liberating the sensibility into catharsis.

  Also, reason itself does involve perennial wonderment at phenomena and the inexorable sense of inquiry into mystery, into the true nature of perception and of knowledge itself. Except for rational thought, the awareness of aesthetic experience might remain incommunicable, and no resurrection might be possible from the simplicity of our sense experience.

  In sum, we see the utter necessity of reason or consciousness to inform us about alt the relevant circumstances which have gone into the making of a work of art; but intellectual theories and facts cannot vouchsafe the passage towards the total experience, or darshana, as we have called it, the flavour (rasa) or the tasting of works of art.

  The role of reason is somewhat discounted in Indian philosophies. It is certainly an important instrument of understanding, but as knowledge is not the only end of art, the ultimate experience of paintings and sculpture is supposed to be through reason but beyond the theories rammed down by the intellect.4

  This point of view is reinforced by European criticism. For instance, Goethe wrote, in his Maxims and Refections, "If one has not studied things with a partiality full of love, what one thinks about them is not worth knowing." Again, he says: "Beauty is inexplicable; it is a hovering, floating, glittering shadow, whose outlines elude the grasp of delineation." Charles Mauron, in The Nature of Beauty in Art and Literature, endorses Goethe's opinion from the point of view of a scientist turned art-critic: "The human mind is an instrument which has limits to its precision, and we must take account of these. . . . What balance could estimate the equilibrium of the work of art? It is made not for the instrument of knowledge but for the sensitive eye whose optic nerve ends in a thinking brain."5

  If Mauron had gone deeper, he would have added the words "by way of intuition."

  The multiheaded bird of reason can, therefore, discriminate, discuss, debate, question and even judge the evidence supplied by the other five birds. It can formulate opinions about the causes which may have motivated the artist, indicating how far they were moral, social, political, psychological or merely rhythmic. It may beckon up, from related evidence, the possible date of the picture, the considerations behind it, the intention of the artist—for example, how far a picture represents genuine religious belief or merely an affectation of religiosity. It can seek to rescue from the subliminal consciousness the symbols, flourishes and motifs used by the artist—for instance, the pair of happy birds perched on the tree above the head of the heroine which remind her of the absence of her own mate. It may argue about the technique of a picture, and consider such matters as proportion, perspective and symmetry. It may insist on reading the picture like a s
torybook, or insist on direct experience and decide how the artist illustrates a story, because it can decide how far and to what extent the painter paints his version in colours, lines and forms and not in words. Those activities of the bird of reason, as it flies self-consciously from impression to impression, idea to idea, image to image, theory to theory, fact to fact, between impression and idea, idea and image, image and theory, theory and fact, are infinitely useful. But, because of reason's bias in favour of knowledge of the dialectic of forms, rather than the tasting of beauty, it can only yield important and useful background information and deliver obiter dicta, incidental observations, it cannot give the total experience, as it forgets that feeling-image and image-idea often precede concept-idea, and that the concept is no substitute for the vital inner life of a picture.

  Again, the comment of the scientist-aesthete Mauron is illuminating: "It is a terrible poser for the partisan of a purely intellectual art to explain why so much science, so subtle and so profound, can at times appear so vain. It is indeed because one can add as many terms as one likes to a formula, but it can never in any way attain the character of a sensation." Further: "The creation of a work of art is certainly a happy occurrence. It is a phenomenon which, according to what we have said, is more related to biological than purely intellectual facts."6

  The anonymous writer of the article on aesthetics in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica emphasises the same truth: "Some who have cold affections, sluggish imaginations, and no habits of observation, can [only] with difficulty discern beauty in anything. While others who are full of kindness and sensibility, and who have been accustomed to attend objects around, feel it in almost everything."

  So it often happens that, though the bird of reason has been hovering near enough to experience, it has missed aesthetic significance, because this bird lives in the reflection of the fire that rages in a work of art rather than in the flame itself. This bird with the lamps in its head lights up the path so that the bird of imagination may break through to the real illumination. If the other birds have flown together by seeing into the picture, then the bird of reason leads them to the phoenix bird (Fig. 53).

  53. Bird of reason leads them.

  7: The Phoenix Bird

  54. Phoenix bird.

  IF YOU HAVE not already walked away from the work of art in despair at its complexity, after considering the evidence of one, two or three of the six birds described above, then there may be a moment of humility when you begin to feel deeply what you felt superficially at the first glance. This happens because now you have penetrated into the various relations of the pictorial situation and wish to seize upon the life of the picture with the help of the bird of imagination, the phoenix bird (Fig. 54).

  At this stage, you may probably wish to sit down in a convenient place and allow yourself to contemplate the work of art.

  As you sense the delight of the visual discovery, you may wish to heighten your experience. So you begin to use your imagination to reconstruct the composition as vision, in all its pictorial or plastic values: the fusion of colours into one another; the volumes; the balance or imbalance; the horizontal or vertical lines; the organic relations of circles, triangles and cubes; the play of light and shade. Thus the spatial contrasts which constitute movement, holding the picture together in inner gradations, will lead to peripheral suggestions, creating echoes or resonances from the integral composition, And you may glimpse suggestions of the creative process in the work of art. It is possible that only the contour of a volume or the harmony of colours may ignite the sparks latent in your personality, and then the phoenix bird of the imagination may fly off, releasing you into the reality of the visionary image, allowing you to taste that flavour which is the real juice of the work of art, giving you, silently and mysteriously, a living, genuine and subtle contact with what the artist's sensibility has infused into the visionary image—the ecstasy, if you would like to call it such, of the vision, or darshana itself.

  Shakespeare put it succinctly: "Imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown."1

  Baudelaire remarked: "How mysterious is imagination, that Queen of the Faculties, it touches all the others; it rouses them and sends them into combat. At times, it resembles them to the point of confusion, and yet it is always itself, and those men who are not quickened thereby are easily recognisable by some strange curse which withers their productions like the fig tree in the Gospel."2

  In the ancient Hindu text Sahitya Darpana, the critic Vishwanatha has summed up the same idea more explicitly:

  It is both analysis and synthesis; and yet men clever at analysis and sufficiently quick in summing up, can be devoid of imagination. It is that and it is not entirely that. It is sensitivity and vet there are people who are very sensitive, too sensitive perhaps, who have none of it. It is imagination that first taught man the moral meaning of colour, of contour, of sound and of scent. In the beginning of the world it created analogy, and metaphor, and with the raw materials accommodated and disposed it in accordance with rules whose origins one cannot find save in the furtherest steps of the soul; it creates a new world, it produces a sensational newness. As it has created the world (so much can be said, I think, even in a religious sense), it is proper that it should govern it. What would be said about a warrior without imagination? That he might make an excellent soldier, but that if he is put in command of any army, he will make no conquest. The case could be compared to that of a poet or a novelist who took away the command of his faculties from the imagination to give it for example to his knowledge of language or to his observation of facts. What would be said of a diplomat without imagination? That he may have an excellent knowledge of the histories of treaties and alliances held in store by the future. Of a scholar without imagination? That he has learnt everything that having been taught, could be learnt, but that he will never discover any laws that have not yet been guessed at. Imagination is the queen of truth, and the possible god of the provinces of truth. It has a positive relationship with the infinite. Without imagination, all the faculties, however sound or sharp they may be, are as though they do not exist, whereas the weakness in some of the secondary faculties, as long as they are excited by vigorous imagination, is a secondary misfortune. None of them can do without it, but the lack of some of them can be made up by it. Often, whenever other faculties only find that they are seeking after successive trials of several different methods which are ill-adapted to the nature of things, imagination steps in and proudly and simply guesses the answer. Those devoid of imagination are but as woodwork, walls, and stones.3

  Plato in the Phaedrus reaches the conclusion that beauty is a supersensuous, spiritual essence which is discerned by the mind thrown into ecstasy.4

  Normally, we are not able to differentiate the processes of looking and of seeing. The first, second and third birds fly off in quick succession and the impatient onlooker makes up his mind and is generally content to mistake the title of a work of art for the complex of references implicit in its structure.

  As against this, it is necessary to fly the other birds by willing oneself into the mood of active contemplation. This process can be prolonged at one session, or one can come back to the work of art again and again. It is possible, by concentration, to prevent the distraction of the mind by relaxing to the music appropriate to a work of art, and thus to suppress many incoming and outgoing sensations. For instance, it is quite possible to stare and stare, to look and look again, to allow a more detailed discrimination of the subtlest colours and lines, to recall the atmosphere of the landscape which has been transformed in the work of art. It is also possible deliberately to excite the action of the basal ganglion of the thalamus and the corpus-striatum, which receives and directs action and sensation into the cortex of the brain and in the spinal column, almost simultaneously. It is possible to stimulate the vagus nerve to plumb the depths of the subconscious, to awaken or to stir the serpent power, and by continuous meditation accompan
ied by patient and deep breathing, to enact the drama of overstimulus of the reflex centre which may generate the impulse to activise the brain and then lighten the whole body-soul. It is possible then to free the bird of the imagination, which, once released, can take full control and enable one to achieve darshana, confrontation or absorption (Fig. 55).

  There is no doubt that such contemplation is a kind of concentration, which, if practised constantly, can bring deeper and more accurate control of the personality over itself.

  I would like to suggest, however, that many artists—and enlightened onlookers also—unconsciously allow themselves, according to the bent of their sensibilities and under the compulsion to understand, to concentrate on the desired object and achieve the degrees of awareness possible in the phenomenal world. The inborn talents of highly creative men have given them a special capacity for penetration through the superficial responses to the deepest centres. The genius is able to will himself into dhayana, or meditation, to generate the efferent impulse which connects the current of knowledge with the spinal cord and with the whole inner world of faculty and experience, from which the illumination takes place. The seer, the appreciator or taster, always strives, beyond the consciousness of constant impressions of the desired object, to fill them with the awareness of the subconscious, and then lift them to the superconscious awareness of interpenetration of one thing by another. Thus concentration acts as the will force, meditation as a liberation of energies in the flow, and darshana, or total perception, is brought about by the flight of the bird of imagination, from within the context of a work of art to the realm of essences.