Osian's Auction Catalogue India The Passionate Detachment | February 2001

17 Few have the courage to tell their partner you be faithful to yourself, first and foremost, and I trust that in that act our love will be sustained, our togetherness maintained. Most demand a faithfulness, which sooner or later pushes away the love, for the other is rarely given the time to know themselves, with the freedom they crave another should give them. Trust in oneself does not evolve, and so trust in another feels missing. It is only after such shows of faith that one can take another for granted. For by then it is no longer seen in the tone of ‘taken for granted’. It has become transformed due to love, which has been nurtured amid this mutual freedom. This is the essence which will mould the future co- existence of people. This ‘giving of freedom’, and ‘letting uncertainties be’ are subtle ideas which require the reaffirmation of daily life. The present system does not allow one the space and time to practice such ideals, and so naturally their usefulness is negated, and the philosophy dismissed. Thus it becomes the duty of the artist and philosopher to also become the teacher, economist, politician, and sage. Each aspect disciplining the other, thereby giving a fuller authenticity to each specific role. 3 It must be stressed that the merger of different disciplines is not simply a result of synthesis. The initial separation is the illusion, which is then paradoxically denied by an attempt at synthesis. This gives the human mind the false accolade of creating a form, when all which actually happens is that the underlying unity is revealed. The artist-philosopher-teacher economist-politician-sage is already existing in the human psyche. To reveal the unity is the requirement, rather than teaching that one is creating a union. Thus an educational system which allows an inner organic search, rather than imposing a preconceived inter-disciplinary hierarchy is more likely to succeed. However, the critical faculty which structures a framework so that holism can become a living force, requires the transition of inter-disciplinarity. Further, the creation of synthesis is easier for the mind to assimilate, especially one focused on the reality of opposition. Hence within creativity exists the genius to grasp the nature of uncertainty. It alone has the openness of intent to give the unlimited more freedom. In this process it has the ability to be fair. It is in providing this spirit of fairness that lies the ethical dimension of creativity, rooted in the instinct of giving freedom, itself dependent on the will to be self-critical with joy. It is this joyous self-criticism which is the foundation of infrastructure-building. Notes 1 ‘Sheltered’ from having to face its materiality, ie: having to transform ideas into practice. 2 Inter-disciplinarity is but an effective stepping stone towards holism and its interconnectedness. You cannot simply take five different departments put them into one enclosed space and institution, and say inter-disciplinarity exists. The process is more akin to the rocky water source which encapsulates and then flows into different streams, and later when more steady, the streams come to merge into an all encompassing powerful flowing river. Interdisciplinarity is more like the dam which collects and allows a later merger to occur efficiently, without truly grasping the process. 3 In this pursuit of totality every new linkage and inter- relationship acts as a discipline to the other, closing off irrelevancies with a greater pace and justification than opening out new possibilities. Yet each new possibility also creates a distraction, which in turn influences the nature of concentration. However, the only path by which new distractions become points of foci, hence areas of concentrated effort, is by absorption rather than avoidance being the basis of a learning process. Only in sustaining this (seemingly) unending spiral of connections between seeming distractions and foci can one begin to nurture a multi-faceted intelligence.