This article is an excerpt from author Jose Arguelles‘ final book, Manifesto for the Noosphere. His book marks the first in a new pocket-sized Manifesto series from Evolver Editions.
Art is the medium for collective and planetary fulfillment. It is the enactment of the noosphere as the supreme form of cooperation of the cosmic intelligence channeled by the human collective in co-creative interaction with the whole Earth, herself an embodiment of the divine self in its planetary order. With the noosphere engaged, the Earth becomes a psychic instrument of the cosmic consciousness.
Transformed into a work of art, it takes its new place in the grand symphony of cosmic civilization. To think in this way about art and the role of art in the evolution of consciousness is already an aspect of the new way of the Noosphere. The Earth is a planetary art whole, and art is a supreme method of cosmo-biological evolution. In the economic worldview of materialism, art is a commodity to be traded, bought, and sold. A piece of canvas no larger than a square meter can fetch a price in the millions of dollars, simply because the name associated with it has been valued by a few critics and flaunted before the public as a genius and creator of masterpieces.
We do not seek to demean any artist but to question how one work of art could be valued at millions and another to be virtually of no value at all? This is not the purpose or reason for art in the cosmo-biological perspective. Our whole sense of art and its purpose must be overhauled. It is not just some sideline activity that is of questionable economic purpose, but the very essence of our being and nature in the cosmic scheme of things. It is how nature works out her design in conscious and super-conscious structures of meaning.
If in the Noosphere we are going from “time is money” to “time is art,” what does this mean?
We have to imagine that the structural basis of the entire planetary social order is reorganized so that the highest priority is given to artistic expression—not just individual artistic expression but to collective artistic expression as well. Art is not merely an activity practiced during leisure time, as in today’s economic terms; on the contrary, it is the very essence of all human activity including economic. This means that the human is no longer a passive consumer of packaged entertainment but an active participant in the whole co-creative process of being alive in the universe. This shift in the fundamental existential role of the human in the natural order is accompanied by a heightened activity of the psychic being, of the expansion of paranormal powers hitherto only dimly perceived or even unknown.
This appraisal of the role of art and the very nature of human existence is not just a result of the devaluation of money or of monetary value altogether, but of a whole shift in perception and our understanding of the nature of consciousness. Art, artistic value, and aesthetics in general play a formative and purposeful role in cosmic evolution, which is really the evolution of consciousness and the attainment of ever more spiritualized states of being. In this evolution, art is the vehicle or medium for consciousness realization.
