The Mind Ship Exodus
Tire shred steel wire & metal mesh with video projection, musical score by Mary Rapp, 30 x 17 x 5 Meters, Riyadh, 2021.
A great exodus within the mind is underway as new ideas, dreams and beliefs seek refuge far away from the intolerant, the rigid and the fenatical state of mind.
For the mind to adopt new ways of thinking it must remain in a constant state of plasticity, trusting in its own power to propel thoughts into ideas, shape ideas into beliefs and to allow for those beliefs to be challenged again by new sparks of thought. Seeking out change within the mind requires the desire and will to navigate unfamiliar landscapes, though many times treacherous and unwieldy they often reward those who seek them with transformative ideas. To find peace within the mind we must make peace with the process of old ideas being extinguished in order to ignite bright nodes of contemplation within the mind.
It is widely suggested that the brain was not regarded as the engine of thought and emotion throughout most of our prehistory, the source for thought was instead considered to reside in the heart, the power of these pre scientific views can be seen in our everyday language, words and phrases like “learn by heart”, “heart broken” and “heart felt” continue to hold sway over our modern lack of understanding of the true power and role of the mind. In the epic of Gilgamesh, one of our earliest written narratives, emotions and feelings were clearly based in the heart. While in the Indian Vedic hymns written over 3,000 years ago, the heart is considered the sight of thought. The Pueblo Indians of South America believed that the invading “ white man” was mad because he thought with the mind and not his heart. While on the other side of the planet a key belief held by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people removed the origin of thought from the body and instead linked it to the land.
In his article Biblical Entheogens: a Speculative Hypothesis, Professor Benny Shanon notes similarities between the effects induced by the entheogen DMT, which contains ayahuasca, and the biblical narrative of prophet Musa’s encounter with a burning bush that was ablaze without ever being consumed by its flame -. Both experiences result in alterations in perception, consciousness and cognition and give rise to spiritual revelations within a perceived sacred context. Professor Benny Shanon’s hypothesis speculates that the key event of the Old Testament might refer to a psychedelic experience noting that some varieties of Acacia trees that grow in the “holy land” do indeed contain this psychedelic substance. As noted in the religious narrative, the burning bush experience ignited the story of The Exodus and the ‘departure of the Israelites from Egypt’.
In The Mind Ship Exodus, a vessel is offered up for our escape into the cosmos of our minds, a journey upon an unfamiliar mindscape for those seeking salvation upon the shores of transformative ideas. The mind is the source of limitless energy and imagination able to propel us forward towards altered and new states of thinking.
Image set credit Artur Weber
Commissioned by RCRC for the Noor Riyadh festival, 2021