My intention in writing my book has been to describe how I have changed my cognitive-powers so as to make mentally visible the pictorial logic that governs how growth acts as a transformative force so as to improve the authenticity of my images of living plants by being able to include pictorial references to Growth in my artwork. By doing this I have also provided a preliminary answer to the question raised in the Introduction of my book concerning our cognitive powers: is there a cognitive limit to what we can comprehend when all our mental faculties are fully developed and consciously utilised?
By developing my powers of inner visualisation to mentally visualise how growth acts as transformative force this has completely changed my status as a cognitive-being from that of a ‘disembodied onlooker’ of the natural world to a cognitive-being that is becoming more aware of my complete embodiment within the natural world. When I realised this and that my inner visualisations were performing this vital function of starting to re-integrate my consciousness with how the natural world operated this was a significant step forward for I was now no longer merely observing the world from the ‘outside’ and trying to comprehend it purely from an abstract intellectual viewpoint because by developing my powers of inner visualisation I am changing my status as a cognitive being from an exclusive reliance upon an abstract, intellectual objectification of natural phenomena to conceptualise the meaning of what I perceive into a cognitive power that includes an understanding of how living organisms, such as a living plant, have come-into-being from their perspective.
The discovery that I am able to enhance the cognitive potential of my mind by developing my powers of inner visualisation so as to be able to mentally perceive aspects of the pictorial logic that governs how a living plant’s appearance changes as it grows is a significant step forward because it demonstrates how when my Imaginative powers are developed they can act as a cognitive force that makes mentally visible that which was previously invisible. And as such this is a partial answer to the question raised in the Introduction referred to above, and it is only partial because presently I have not developed my Inspiration and Intuition to the same degree as my Imagination and so do not know what previously invisible dimensions of a living plant they are capable of revealing when they are developed. By logically developing my Imagination so as to be able to mentally perceive and comprehend something that I could not previously perceive is important because it is a confirmation that my status as a cognitive-being was in the process of being transformed from that of a ‘disembodied onlooker’ unable to see how growth was changing a living plant’s appearance into a cognitive-being that was mentally able to start doing so. That is by being able to mentally perceive through inner visualisations something that was previously imperceptible to me I realised that my cognitive-powers were being enhanced through the development of my powers of inner visualisation.
Another example of how the development of my powers of inner visualisation to perceive aspects of the pictorial logic that governs how growth operates as a transformative force are further improving my cognitive powers was demonstrated by how my inner visualisations brought to the surface of my consciousness a pictorial knowledge concerning how growth operates as a transformative force that I did not realise that I had in fact previously unconsciously partially understood. By intensively observing and sketching the changes of appearance of many differing living plants over many years I had unconsciously absorbed a not fully formed, immature pictorial understanding of how growth operated as a transformative force, however because I was not fully conscious of absorbing this pictorial knowledge whilst I was observing and sketching living plants it had slipped unrefined into my unconscious. The fact that this pictorial knowledge lies dormant in my unconscious but that it could be re-activated and refined by my inner visualisations underlined for me that I do have a ‘higher self’ that possesses advanced cognitive powers that operate under their own auspices. In the past by the means of my ‘higher self’ I had unconsciously comprehended aspects of the metamorphic pictorial logic that governs how growth acts as a transformative force as I looked at a living plant, (despite being unaware that I was doing so at the time), and regardless of the fact of being unable to consciously perceive growth’s metamorphic activity in action as I looked at a living plant. At this point I realised that my ‘higher self’ had been continuously active within me from my earliest years without my conscious knowledge of its presence and without an ability to consciously make use of its power.
The strangeness of Growth is that I never see it in action in a living plant despite being unable to ignore the effects that it eventually has upon any living organism’s appearance. Ordinarily as we look at a living plant we cannot see the life-force that is keeping it alive, and we also cannot see that it is actually changing whilst we look at it, which it must be doing if it is alive because over time we recognise that the plant we originally saw has changed from how it first appeared to us through its growth, and now has a different appearance. Thus my images are concerned with the metamorphic changes of appearance that a living plant exhibits as it grows. During the course of our everyday life there is no perceivable perceptual proof that the living plant we are observing is actually alive as we look at it, we intellectually know that it is but cannot see that it is. As discussed in my book my inner visualisations demonstrate to me that there is a geometrically-based pictorial logic that governs how growth operates as a transformative force, thereby converting my time-based everyday separate linear observations of a living plant’s changes of appearance into a continuous mental event by revealing to me what takes place whilst I am unable to observe a living plant due to my need for sleep and food etc. These animated, ever-changing inner visualisations thus pictorially reveal to me the unceasing metamorphic continuity of a living plant’s growth in the ‘here and now’ of my Mind, even though I am normally physically incapable of seeing that it is taking place as I observe a living plant. That is by developing my imagination into a cognitive-power I have unearthed and made pictorially known to me that which my intellect only abstractly acknowledges as existing but which I am unable to perceive and confirm as I look at a living plant, which is the fact that growth is always actually changing a living plant’s appearance regardless as to whether I am looking at it or not. This is another instance of how my inner visualisations are cognitively clarifying for me some of the anomalies of my immediate perception of living organisms by revealing to me aspects of the ordinarily ‘invisible’ pictorial logic that governs growth’s activity in a living plant.
Having started to expand the cognitive-potential of my Mind by developing my imaginative abilities so as to be able to mentally envisage aspects of the pictorial logic that governs how growth acts as a transformative force that is continuously changing the appearance of living organisms the next step is to attempt to discover what Growth is in-itself as an outcome of formative forces that in-themselves are an attribute of Life’s presence in a living organism. This has not been an easy process and it is only during the past several years that my inner visualisations are starting to reveal any significant pictorial information regarding the secret life of a plant that I can include in my artwork.
Presently my inner visualisations have not enabled me to actually perceive as I look at a living plant a living plant’s life-force that causes a living plant to grow and change its appearance as an active thing-in-itself. My inner visualisations to start with were purely concerned with resolving the paradox of only intellectually knowing on an hypothetical basis that growth exists through the effects it has on a living plant’s appearance and yet not being able to perceive it as an active force in-itself as I looked at a living plant. I was only concerned with trying to mentally envision the pictorial logic that governs how growth operates as a transformative force from the ‘outside’ so as to be able to depict examples of plant metamorphosis in my artwork. Although I was not initially concerned with trying to make physically visible these normally invisible supersensible formative forces that cause growth as things-in-themselves, nevertheless my inner visualisations have brought me to the borderline of spiritual worlds and the reality of their existence. Through my inner visualisations I have rendered mentally visible aspects of the pictorial logic that governs how growth operates as a transformative force thereby making mentally visible that which previously I only intellectually knew to exist but could not immediately perceive as I looked at a living plant. The importance of this is that Growth is caused by invisible supersensible formative forces and as such my inner visualisations of the pictorial logic that governs how Growth operates as a transformative force is my first but only partially realised contact with these invisible supersensible realms of formative forces as they operate in my everyday life. Thus by mentally visualising aspects of the pictorial logic that governs how growth operates as a transformative force I have started the process of recognising the operative presence of invisible formative supersensible forces in my ordinary day-to- day experiences of the natural world surrounding me.
I have now described how I have developed my Imagination in conjunction with Geometry to be able to mentally perceive and cognise through inner visualisations the ‘pictorial logic’ that governs how Growth operates as a transformative force in living plants. This means I can now create what I consider to be more authentic images of a living plant by being able to include references in my artwork to the ‘pictorial logic’ that governs how growth operates as a metamorphic force in a living plant, and this explains why my artwork appears the way that it does. By developing my ability to visualise aspects of the ‘pictorial logic’ that governs how Growth acts as a transformative force this is enabling me to fulfil one of my ambitions for my artwork which is to depict how the spatial world that we ordinarily perceive is completely infused with the activity of normally imperceptible formative forces that we intellectually know to exist even though usually we cannot perceive these formative forces in action as we look into the spatial world surrounding us. To start with my inner visualisations of the ‘pictorial logic’ that governs how growth operates as a formative force were a practical solution to my ordinary inability to physically perceive the activity of growth as I looked at a living plant. After practising and developing my powers of inner visualisation for long periods of time I found, as described above, that I was becoming more aware of the presence and reality of supersensible forces that worked alongside what I could physically perceive, such as formative forces themselves and my ‘higher self’. This continuing transformation of my cognitive-powers has revolutionised my consciousness because I am now able to mentally perceive that which was previously ‘invisible’ (for instance, aspects of the ‘pictorial code’ that governs how growth can act as a transformative force in a living plant). It is now a constant source of fascination and wonderment how through my powers of inner visualisation I am now able to mentally visualise how an individual plant’s appearance changes over the course of the growing season. My ability to inwardly visualise how Growth operates as a metamorphic force has been made possible by my development of a ‘pictorial thinking’ that is based upon enhancing my imaginative powers so as to mentally visualise how growth operates as a transformative force in a living plant. This ‘pictorial thinking’ based upon inner visualisations mentally operates in harmony with my usual Intellectual thinking, thereby enabling me to mentally comprehend that which I cannot normally perceive of a living plant’s existence with only my ordinary intellectual powers. As indicated above, this is my first step towards comprehending the spiritual, supersensible dimensions of a living plant inherent to its physical presence. When we examine what constitutes our immediate perception of the phenomenal world surrounding us it becomes apparent that, in general, we can only make sense of the surfaces of phenomena but cannot perceive what it is that has brought these surfaces into existence; that is with living organisms we are completely unable to perceive that which keeps any living organism alive. Through my inner visualisations I am exploring and gradually bringing my Imagination under my conscious control just as humanity in the past has brought the Intellect under its conscious control.
Another vital area for future investigation is the interaction between Life and Matter and this draws attention to the role that sentient beings play in maintaining the continuation of a living planet. By developing my powers of inner visualisations this has highlighted the fact that human beings are not just cognitive-beings but they are also active creative beings through necessity; and the reason for this is that Nature does not supply all our needs for our survival and this overrides our personal cultural creativity. That is humanity does not just want to know the world but by necessity has to be active and creative within it so as to supply all that which we need for our survival. There are however conflicts between how nature creatively fills space and how humanity creatively fills space. First of all we are unable to endow anything that we create with a life-force so that it is able to sustain its own existence, and secondly we do not fully comprehend what the principles are that nature’s formative forces utilise for the construction of all the physical bodies of the living organisms that it does create. Thus our human creativity is not in harmony with Nature’s creativity because it is predominately based upon the Mechanical whereas Nature’s creativity is predominately based upon the mysteries of Organic Metamorphosis. I know that neither I nor any other human being has created the natural world surrounding us, and this is puzzling for given the complexity of the construction of living organisms the question becomes how has this complexity arisen; and currently the scientific answers to this question are not entirely convincing. Even an apparently commonplace plant such as a Dandelion displays a remarkable degree of sophisticated bio-engineering that is far beyond our present creative capabilities.
However what the above commentary indicates is that no matter what sort of solution is envisaged to answer it our attention is drawn to the mystery of ‘thinking’. Where does ‘thinking’ come from? Thoughts are completely invisible and undetectable through our ordinary senses and cannot be seen in ourselves or other people; yet we cannot deny their reality and the fact that they actually do exist. Thinking enables us to know things, discern relationships between things and identify them, but is that the limit of thinking’s cognitive potential or is there more to our minds and ‘thinking’. There are numerous further questions similar to the ones already outlined regarding ‘thinking’ and the majority of these questions are also relevant to our ‘emotions’. During the course of our everyday lives we can see how ‘emotions’ affect the physiognomy of individuals but we cannot see our emotions as independent things-in-themselves operating in any human being or anywhere in the outer world. However I am not the only person engaged in thinking and experiencing emotions and so the world is awash with countless invisible thoughts and emotions that cannot ordinarily be detected through our senses as things-in-themselves. The above is an abridged selection of issues that can only be fully examined in later books.
I re-state that the main intention of my book is an explanation of how I have enhanced my powers of inner visualisation so as to be able to mentally perceive aspects of the pictorial logic that governs how growth operates as a metamorphic force in a living plant which I cannot ordinarily perceive. These inner visualisations are a provisional mental solution to the fact that normally I am unable to physically perceive that a living plant’s appearance is changing as it grows whilst I am looking at a living plant. From what I have envisioned I can subsequently create images of living plants that contain references to growth’s activities as a transformative force thereby improving their authenticity by being able to reference that which is invisible for my immediate perception. The meaning of which is that I am now able to render that which is invisible for my immediate perception (how growth operates as a metamorphic force upon a living plant’s appearance) ‘visible’ through my artwork of living plants. In this respect the images on my website are a record of my attempts to transfer what I have mentally envisaged of growth’s metamorphic activity into my artwork of living plants. In effect this is an attempt to make visible through my artwork that which I cannot see as I look at a living plant but which I intellectually know exists and is constantly taking place in living organisms. Since a living Plant is alive then it is growing as we are looking at it, except we cannot normally perceive this as we look at a living plant, and only become aware that it has changed through Growth after prolonged time-periods have elapsed. We then see how it has grown in size and changed in appearance, however, this is not what interests me. During this period of growth the living plant not only miraculously expands in size and weight but changes its appearance. Later leaf-growth is distinctly different from earlier leaf-growth. It is plain to see that Growth has a two-fold action in a living plant of expanding its size and weight whilst constantly changing its appearance as it size and weight increase. As a living plant grows the appearance of its parts change and these transformations reach a pinnacle with the calyx and the subsequent production of flowers, fruit and seeds.