From Inside Out


Picture This:

Here you are,
looking at an 8-feet high sphere, pulsating with wild colors.
The sphere is barely touching the ground
and appears to exist on its own.
And then a voice says: "Now, step in !"
You take a few steps towards the sphere and,
as you close in,
you realize that the colors are made of intricate swirling designs
and you stay there, fascinated...

 

The same voice prompts you again: "Step in, please !" So, shaking up your spectator self, you finally dare to touch the surface: it’s only veil thin and yes! now, you are actually inside. As soon as you are in, the whole sphere seems to respond and starts dancing with you: layers upon layers of stimuli (colors, sounds, shapes, fragrances and textures...) seem to approach and recede from all directions until they find some sort of a "fit" whose locale might be felt inside your body (even in a specific cell) or inside some mindscape / energy space. More and more frequencies click in until, at a certain point of crystallization, the entire mandala field comes to "lock in": suddenly, you lose awareness of boundary separation and you become the field itself which then seems to pulsate faster and faster...
...The rest is your personal cosmic journey.
 

*

This is the vision projected by mandala artist Aya.


On Christmas day 1984, Aya had a vision of a sequence of 144 mandala designs (dubbed the "StarWheels") that he proceeded to airbrush on canvas. Today, the StarWheel family is 108+ members strong and keeps growing.

To be sure, the StarWheels are in line with the ageless tradition of "mandalas" or sacred-magical circles used around the world from the dawn of history to establish "windows" or "portals" of communication with other realms of consciousness. What is new here is the technology connection. Aya claims that his StarWheels are "software disks to program holographic computers yet to come". If this is true, we have a case of software preceding the hardware.

While waiting for technology to catch up with the art, here are some user’s instructions to handle the StarWheels. Says Aya:
"When you look at a mandala you have to interact with it and to provide the missing parts. For one thing, you soon realize that the 2-D design is actually the equatorial cross-section of a 3-D sphere. Then you have to bring dynamic motion into it so that the sphere becomes animated, pulsated with various depths of color and sound frequencies. The last step is to project yourself at the center-core of this pulsating sphere and to experience it from the inside."

In other words, we are, each one of us, a holographic being. And if you feel too shy to unleash that level of personal power, there will soon be holographic computer technologies helping us to become again...

...the swirling Mandala that We Are


(Press Release. Santa Monica, CA. 1990)