Mankind has always been fascinated with the invisible, the unknown, the unknowable. Perhaps, as the economist E.F Schumacher has pointed out, this reflects hierarchy we experience in the very process of living, as we move along the natural progression from stone to plant to animal to a human being.
Stones are, by our definition, no more than the material they comprise. Plants, consist of physical materials, with a new entity added- life!- and the journey towards the invisible has begun. Animal consist of materials, plus life, plus motivation. With humankind, there is yet another entity- self-awareness- which puts us in the world of unseen. For everything essential in our fellow human beings- their thoughts, emotions, aspirations, fantasies- are invisible to us. These 'invisibilia' are of infinitely greater power and significance than the visibilia of everyday life.
Man, since the very beginning of time, has always sensed the presence of the invisible- and has used the most materialistic elements, like stone and earth, steel and the concrete, to express the invisible- and paradoxically has used compulsive myths that obsess him. In India, the mythic beliefs that generate the deep structure of built-form go back thousand of years. Since according to Vedic thoughts, the world we see is only part of our existence, the forms and events we perceive are significant merely to the extent that they help us understand the non-manifest layers that lie beneath.
Stones are, by our definition, no more than the material they comprise. Plants, consist of physical materials, with a new entity added- life!- and the journey towards the invisible has begun. Animal consist of materials, plus life, plus motivation. With humankind, there is yet another entity- self-awareness- which puts us in the world of unseen. For everything essential in our fellow human beings- their thoughts, emotions, aspirations, fantasies- are invisible to us. These 'invisibilia' are of infinitely greater power and significance than the visibilia of everyday life.
Man, since the very beginning of time, has always sensed the presence of the invisible- and has used the most materialistic elements, like stone and earth, steel and the concrete, to express the invisible- and paradoxically has used compulsive myths that obsess him. In India, the mythic beliefs that generate the deep structure of built-form go back thousand of years. Since according to Vedic thoughts, the world we see is only part of our existence, the forms and events we perceive are significant merely to the extent that they help us understand the non-manifest layers that lie beneath.
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