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Gysin, Brion - Effects of using a Dream machine
Identifier
002071
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Extract from the diary of Brion Gysin
You are the artist when you approach a Dreamachine with your eyes closed. What the Dreamachine incites you to see is yours… your own. The brilliant interior visions you so suddenly see whirling around inside your head are produced by your own brain activity. These may not be your first glimpse of these dazzling lights and celestial coloured images.
Dreamachines provide them only just as long as you choose to look into them. What you are seeing is perhaps a broader vision than you may have had before of your own incalculable treasure, the “jungian” sort of symbols which we share with all normally constituted humanity.
From this storehouse, artists and artisans have drawn the elements of art down the ages. In the rapid flux of images, you will immediately recognise crosses, stars, haloes… woven patterns like pre-Columbian textiles and Islamic rugs… repetitive patterns on ceramic tile… in embroideries of all times… rapidly fluctuating serial images of abstract art… what look like endless expanses of fresh paint laid on a palette knife.”
The source of the experience
Gysin, BrionConcepts, symbols and science items
Concepts
Symbols
Science Items
Activities and commonsteps
Commonsteps
References
Brion Gysin, The Last Museum (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1986).