Lila

“Birth and death represent the beginning and the end of individual life and are thus natural frontiers with the transpersonal domain not only in experiential work, but also in everyday life.”

Stanislav Grof

Illumination by Scott Cranmer

Nature is fractal and holographic. Patterns expressed on one level can be found iterated on different scales. A human being who has existed as a boundaried, psychobiological organism existing in a Gaian matrix, whom enters the magical and mythopoetic expanses of the transpersonal, is being born - again, into a new and unfamiliar world.

The function of ancient rites of passage or initiatory rites, was to support and guide the individual as they die or dis-identify from one level of being, and learn to exist in a new world, the spiritual reality. The art of Scott Cranmer depicts this birth passage from the confines of habituated and entrained thought patterns to a realm of numinous expansion. His work shows that this journey is not always easy, but rather the fruit of suffering, self-sacrifice and redemption by higher dimensional entities.

The state of the enclosed constricted self is represented as a plane of decay and polarity, combining aspects of sexuality and aggression. Decaying matter, flames, disturbing creatures and sado-masochistic sex symbolise the furious struggle of extrication from limitations. The rebirth into the expansive state is represented as a realm of rich patterned expression of cosmic information and higher powers, where the astral anatomy is depicted as a scintillating vibratory weave of colour, pattern and light.

I could not help but consider as I explored the work of Scott Cranmer how much his imagery reflects in pictorial forms some of the dynamics of transpersonal ecstatic states that the psychotherapist Stanislav Grof identified through 40 years of psychotherapeutic and psychedelic research and Holotropic Breathwork™. Grof has observed that expansion into the transpersonal realms of the psyche often entails a period of suffering : catharting disturbing experiences from the individuals personal biographical past. Beyond this is an extremely energetically charged perinatal unconscious imprinted on the foetus during intrauterine gestation and the birth process : “…a radical transition, from an aquatic form of life whose needs are being continually satisfied by placental circulation to the extreme emotional and physical stress of the birth struggle and then to a radically new existence as an air-breathing organism, is an event of paramount significance that reaches all the way to the cellular level.”

It is Stan Grofs observation that “Pre-and perinatal events play a critical role in the individuals psychological history, and that the memories of these early experiences are available for conscious recall and reliving. The memory of birth represents an important reservoir of difficult emotions and physical sensations that can contribute later in life to the development of various forms of emotional and psychosomatic disorders. Reliving and integrating pre- and perinatal traumas can have very beneficial effects; it can result in healing and profound psychospiritual transformation.” Releasing the repressed imprinting of birth does not always involve a literal experience of biological birth, rather the primal imprint unleashes itself in a powerfully mythopoetic way.

Grof distinguished four experientially distinct birth-perinatal-matrixes (BPM I, II, III, and IV). BPM I corresponds to the oceanic bliss of gestation, BPM II to the beginning of constriction before the birth canal is opened, BPM III to the struggle for survival through the birth canal, and BPM IV to the final delivery into the external world. Grof has observed that people undergoing profound healing crisis seem to undergo journeys that have deep parallels to these different stages of birth. Grof writes “The no-exit stage of birth (BPM II) is often associated with images of hell and archetypal figures representing eternal damnation, such as Sisyphus or Tantalus, as well as identification with victims of various eras drawn from the collective unconscious, and with corresponding past-life experiences. Typical experiential concomitants of the struggle through the birth canal are archetypal images of deities representing death and rebirth and scenes of revolutions appearing as collective or past-life memories. Similarly, the reliving of birth is accompanied by culture-specific images of the Great Mother Goddess and scenes of divine epiphany or sacred marriage” (Grof 1985, 1987, 1992).

Dissolution

Rebirth

Shamanic Journey

Somewhere Inside

The Great Escape

The painting “Shamanic Journey” could be understood via Grofian analysis as such : The bottom of the painting (where Scott says he often begins) depicts a form of Black Mass or satanic sexual ritual that contains images of rotting, putrefying matter, an erect devil phallus and sexual strangulation. These experiences and images commonly occur in reliving energetic transforms of BMP III, where the baby is fighting for breath and freedom against crushing constriction which creates, paradoxically the simultanious emergence of sexual arousal with blind fury. Note also the foetal forms above the satanic orgy. The souls in the mid-section are being “delivered” by a shamanic angel against a vulvic background lined with higher-dimensional entites that appear to be benevolently observing and anticipating the “second birth” of the personality from its state of constriction and polarity.

Christopher Bache , professor of religion and philosophy at the State University in Youngstown, Ohio, who has done the most to creatively develop and enhance Grofs transpersonal cartography, has suggested in his book “Dark Night Early Dawn” that rather than understanding these experiences strictly at the catharting of energetic-memory-transforms from the period of gestation and birth, that these phases represent general rebirth matrices. He writes that the perinatal domain “reflects an operational mode of consciousness in which the personal and transpersonal blend, sharing organizational patterns and structures.” (1995) Like a tuning fork setting others off in a process of sympathetic resonance, facets of the transpersonal are evoked because like attracts like.

Grof explains : “By identifying with intense experiences of the fetus, the individual connects by resonance to the larger field of species consciousness that can be described in terms of Sheldrakes morpho-genetic fields, of C. G. Jungs collective unconscious, or of the Oversoul. This involves experiences of wars, revolutions, and atrocities, as well as triumphs of humanity associated with emotions of unimaginable intensity.

It is thus conceivable–and subjects frequently report this as their insights–that by experiencing the agonies and ecstasies on a collective scale that represent an integral part of the perinatal process, the individual heals not just himself or herself, but contributes to the healing of humankind itself in the sense of the Buddhist archetype of the Bodhisattva or the Christian archetype of Christ.”

Scott, thankyou for your creative outpourings, for they depict with immediacy and power, important dynamics in the process of psychospiritual healing : the need to accept suffering as a companion on the journey toward rebirth in the numinous light of spirit.

Dan
I hope you like what Ive written and that some of the theory from the Grof perspective Ive integrated into the art commentary resonates with you.

Scott
Thanks so much for the awesome writeup. It gave me goosebumps. You have a gift my friend. You stated better than I ever could what I was trying to express in my artwork, esp. shamanic journey. That painting was a direct response to my first DMT experience where I relived death or birth, I am not sure which and felt like it could have been past life stuff or just all my repressions being released at once. I think it may have had a lot to do with birth trauma.

Anyway, I couldnt breath and was being strangled by something. My very soul was out of my hands and I was completely at the mercy something very dark. This coincidentally was the night before tragedy of sept. 11. At one point I couldnt breathe and I tried to jump out of the window but my friend and the therapist holding space kept me here. I feel inclined to tell you another meaning behind this painting and transcendence. When I was ten years old I found a skeleton of a girl who had been missing for ten years. She was 16 years old when she was last seen and was believed to have been raped and murdered. She comes up a lot in my work.

Dan
That sounds like a life-changing encounter and its good to get this background, it explains a lot of the force in the pictures.. they are all such powerful images… is the girl you found also the subject of the painting “Rebirth” ?

Scott
You are right with rebirth. It was inspired by the girl I found. In fact, she has been my muse for most of my paintings.

Dan
Some of your paintings seems like a process of rememberance and honouring the girl, and whats represented is the liberation of her essence from a horrible event on Earth… its almost like soul redemption, through paintings…

Scott
Youre right again. I hope she is OK. Sometimes I think that she is a part of me or that maybe I was her. Or maybe its mirror for me to work with. I am not sure. I know one thing, I have a lot of pain and sorrow inside that seems beyond my own life experiences if you know what I mean.

Dan
So what medium do you use ? On the details it looks like watercolour ?

Scott
The earlier pieces that are offered in 11×17 prints were done using ink. The later ones were done with acrylic paint where I used both a paintbrush and an airbrush. Now I am working with oils and some watercolors. I have also been doing a lot of charcoal sketches…

Dan
I am wondering to your understanding how the images crystalise ? Do you see them in your minds eye then create them, or do they create themselves through the process ?

Scott
I usually start my paintings with an overall blueprint - a pencil sketch. Then I keep refining it with the pencil and paint over the drawing. I like to have most of it laid out in pencil before I start painting it so I can focus on coloring.

Dan
In 2003 I made what I regard as my first true painting. It is a watercolour wash on cotton with gold leaf. Somehow not having just blank white staring back at me helped the rest of the vision manifest, so these days I often just do a colour wash and see where it goes from there. I want to explore deeper watercolours transparent properties, but its a challenging medium… sometimes oils give that oportunity to hide and mask out things… so in some respects watercolour seems a suitable medium right now.

Scott
I love your painting. I knew right away that it was an ayahuasca journey. I liked what you said about the difference between watercolors and oils. In a way watercolors work better for me because there are not so many possibilities.

Dan
I love the almost mayan glyphs or aspects of the superhologram coming from the columns of information in “Illumination”, very shamanic. Like the raw data from which many cultures have derived their styles and symbols. I was wondering you vision-quest or shamanise to feed in this kind of energy to your creative practice ?

Scott
Yes, a broad range of shamanic techniques do open me up to new visions and ideas.

Dan
Your work is holy. Im learning from looking, thanks.

Visit the Art of Scott Cranmer and purchase posters/prints at www.scottcranmer.com