"This
River of Sanity is nourishing a new and vital culture committed
not only to personal transformation but to a planetary ethic
that cherishes Earth as a living entity and understands all
consciousness as a continuous field.
My
work is discovering images that illuminate this process. The
process is guided by several intentions.
To
EXPLORE the Union of ART SCIENCE & RELIGION. When the power
of the sacred and the clarity of science are united with the
persuasiveness of art, something extraordinary and original
can happen. An art-form free of dogma, experiential, ethical,
deeply spiritual, its human values rooted in a mystical generosity
that not only embraces all life, but recognizes others as self.
To
combine word with image, In 1997 I collaborated with poet and
translator Coleman Barks to create The Illuminated Rumi, a merging
of art and text in the tradition of the great illuminated manuscripts.
Called “one of the most celebrated pieces of poetry and
artwork” by Sacred Pathways magazine, The Illuminated
Rumi has become a national top-ten best-seller.
To
assist the transmisson of other wisdom traditions into an american
vernacular, in 1985 I created the quirky, classic Zen &
the Art of the Macintosh. Zen remains one of the most powerful
influences to the emerging spiritual imagination of America.
To
explore The dimension OF MYTH, mythologies are stories that
nourish the soul. Generally set in the past, authentic mythologies,
must also live in the present. In the 80’s I was commissioned
to explore the myth of the Unicorn. I quickly recognized this
charmed creature as a potent emblem of higher consciousness,
and soon found myself enmeshed in a very living story from which
the compelling body of UNICORNIS art emerged.
America
is now giving birth to a mythology of the future. It’s
half-formed, but already deeply embedded in our collective consciousness–it’s
the Road Warrior vision of an After-the-collapse, where things
get wild. It’s clearly an intuition of the huge changes
that are bearing down on us, but it may be ill-informed. A breakdown
of the old order does not necessarily mean a collapse into violence
and anarchy. That River of Sanity culture has deep roots, it
waits, it bides its time, and it brings with it a new, organic
kind of community. What might we become freed from the crushing
weight of the old order? –If we could embrace in our hearts
and live out in our lives a sacred and sustainable path? Sometimes
the quest for understanding something begins by naming it: So
let us call it the Afterculture.
Images come. Here are some
of them, footprints of a possible future.
Onward."
—
Michael Green
