This image was inspired from a visionary state I achieved while experiencing the powerful entheogen LSD. I was subjected to what Tibetan Buddhists call the Wrathful Deities, of the Second Bardo, as described in 'The Psychedelic Experience', a manual based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead By Timothy Leary, Ph.D., Ralph Metzner, Ph.D., & Richard Alpert, Ph.D. The Tibetan Buddhist Lama Anagarika Govinda writes,"The 'Wrathful Deities' are merely the dynamic aspect of enlightenment, the process of becoming a Buddha, of attaining illumination. The ecstatic figures, heroic and terrifying, express the act of breaking through towards the unthinkable, the intellectually unattainable". The Tibetans regard the nightmare visions of the second Bardo as primarily intellectual products. They are the reactions of the mind to the process of consciousness expansion. They represent the attempts of the intellect to maintain its threatened boundaries and symbolize the struggle of breaking through to ego-less understanding and awareness. The full size of this image is 1188 x 840 mm at 254 dpi. I first drew an A3 sized image in 2b pencil, then scanned it and futher edited it within Photoshop 5.5....
Email me with your thoughts, experiences and responses at roger@essig.net
It would be great to talk about this and share knowledge. |
