Transformative Vision by Jose Arguelles

Author:Jose Arguelles [Arguelles, Jose]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

In the Hopi creation story as told by Dan Katchongva, the Great Spirit

made our bodies of two principles, good and evil. The left side is good for it contains the heart. The right side is evil for it contains no heart. The left side is awkward but wise. The right side is clever and strong, but it lacks wisdom. There would be a constant struggle between the two sides, and by our actions we would have to decide which was stronger, the evil or the good.3

There is a remarkable psychophysiological truth to the mythic voice of the Hopi medicine man which is universally applicable. Knowledge or wisdom, symbolized by the left side of the body, must precede intelligence and strength, symbolized by the right side; otherwise moral corruption is the result. Thus the "heartless' right side is considered evil, for when it alone seeks to determine things, disaster is inevitable. In other words, the most fundamental errors begin in assuming the absolute power of reason, or of right. This was the error of Faustian civilization, which created a science without conscience and an art without vision. Right (in French, droit, the same as the word for law), ratio, reason, rote—these are key words for the most fundamental assumptions of the technological civilization that grew out of the European Renaissance. From the Hopi point of view, these assumptions amount to a complete capitulation to the right side of the body and the left cerebral hemisphere, resulting in what has been earlier described as the tyranny of the left hemisphere or the tyranny of reason over vision, woman, the earth, and "minority" views and cultures. In technological culture at first only the artist, and finally only the visionary, was able to maintain some degree of sanity, simply because he was still able to keep a better balance between the left hemisphere and the right. As we have seen, what began as the history of art logically must end as the history of man's insanity, for the degree to which art becomes specialized as fine art, and dependent for its meaning on art history is the degree to which man loses touch with his innate wisdom. In recent times this process has been hastened by the advent of the machine. Since expression is innate to the human species in denying ourselves our expressive wisdom we have denied ourselves our own humanity.

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