A Birth Dream Frees The World Soul With Visionary Art

Birth Dream by Johfra

A full exhibition of Johfra's monumental career of works can be found on Visionary Revue, a publication by Laurence Caruana devoted to the history and future of Visionary Art. The most well-known Visionary Artist in America is Alex Grey. His artworks spurred on my fascination with this new wellspring of artistic creativity. A break from surrealism, visionary artists utilize all triggers available to the human body and soul, toward transcendent & transpersonal spiritual unity. The Birth Dream ignites the power of noetic states to trigger the breath of novelty into the mind of the seer. Completed in 1945, this painting marked the very beginning of Johfra's career. He is today known as the principle pioneer of painting techniques that today are the impetus for creative gatherings of all kinds, celebrating the breadth of wonder that the Visionary World Soul inspires in and through us all.  

_________

I hid in triumphant bedrooms of young fear and coarse humor, watching my love’s eager tongue, to lick night’s end with a tearful silent dimming of conscience and the earth’s bounteous tune of motion, she stopped and looked at the drug-stung gang of princely wealth. 

The Mahant Offers Child Birth Medicine to Elokeshi by Unknown

They passed around a newly synthesized batch of 2C-I, a wrongly attributed artificial form of mescaline, and into the innocent palm of my blue-pill eating love. She sang in the company of the greedy minds that drank Smiles in a worshipful torrent of a sleep-lust rush, yet I knocked the beady teardrop-shaped tablets from her hand and mind in an instant of tough self-worth. 

A Portrait of Frankie Howerd by StuartHampton

I drew her character near, and as dawn waded in the shore-sent horizon, I pointed outward, to an island off the lakebed shore, where the upstairs cottage-lights roamed out onto the moonlit waters, faintly giving way to the sun’s scintillating swarm of heat and meaning. We walked, silent as the ether out onto shore, and for the first time, I saw her swim. 

Shore Landscape by Fanny Churberg

I witnessed her smooth body glean the uncanny movements of a dolphin’s glowing visage as her inward celebration of life met with my dusty ruminations on the natural way, the right road home, without minding the needful eyes of that ghastly rush that now lay strewn over the colonial walls of a midsummer cottage, alone in the wilderness of one natural hallucination. 

Painting of Sohni Mahiwal by Unknown

The samsaric fish swam with the mermaid intelligence of true human pride, and I saw her, she knew as I, that the metaphysical dome of the potent seed can dry out the natural host of our musing otherness already freed by the practice of our unique and artful sanity. 

_________

"with true knowledge of her leaving,

the door closes behind you twice,

            without word,

            in absolute Love,

a vacuous throat

                        shaped by the corridors walked

and now stared through

            sitting in the awesome lesson of the moment’s own home,

                        a dream over 10 years,

                           that this cave is positioned to open towards a passage,

                                                one’s only point of departure

            and perceptual environment is no more or less than passage,

                                                whether through the mixed celebration

of alcohol and music

in Iquitos jungle vibrancy

on the neon drug night

of America’s wandering life"

excerpt from "Blakean Consciousness on a Rainy Day"

Dream of Gerontius

Selections from "The Dream of Gerontius" by Cardinal John Henry Newman

"Gerontius -

And drop from out the universal frame

Into that shapeless, scopeless, blank abyss,

That utter nothingness, of which I came:

           This is it that has come to pass in me;

     

And while the storm of that bewilderment Is for a season spent,

           And, ere afresh the ruin on thee fall, Use well the interval.

Down, down for ever I was falling through

The solid framework of created things,

And needs must sink and sink

           Into the vast abyss.

           
           Soul of Gerontius

          

I  WENT to sleep; and now  I am refreshed.

A strange refreshment: for I feel in me

An inexpressive lightness, and a sense

Of freedom, as I were at length myself

And ne’er had been before. How still it is!

I hear no more the busy beat of time,

No, nor my fluttering breath, nor struggling pulse;

           Nor does one moment differ from the next. I had a dream; yes: — someone softly said 

           “He’s gone;” and then a sigh went round the room.

            Am I alive or dead? I am not dead,
            But in the body still; for I possess
            A sort of confidence which clings to me,
            That each particular organ holds its place
            As heretofore, combining with the rest
            Into one symmetry that wraps me round,
            And makes me man; and surely I could move,
            Did I but will it, every part of me.

           Assure myself I have a body still.
           Nor do I know my very attitude,
           Nor if I stand, or lie, or sit, or kneel.

So much I know, not knowing how I know,

That the vast universe, where I have dwelt,

Is quitting me, or I am quitting it.

Or am I traversing infinity

By endless subdivision, hurrying back

From finite towards infinitesimal,

          Thus dying out of the expansed world?

Another marvel; someone has me fast

Within his ample palm; ‘tis not a grasp

Such as they use on earth, but all around

          Over the surface of my subtle being,

And gentle pressure tells me I am not

          Self-moving, but borne forward on my way.

Angel

Divide a moment, as men measure time,

Into its million-million-millionth part,

Yet even less than that the interval

           Since thou didst leave the body;

And thou art wrapped and swathed around in dreams,

           Dreams that are true, yet enigmatical;

Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;

Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,

           And I will come and wake thee on the morrow."

[these are the ending lines]

*the entire poem can be found here