Oceanic Oneness

06Aug08

Early Girl Tomato, graphite on paper, 5 x 6 in

A thing is a think. -Alan Watt

Recently I was listening to a conversation about how babies have not developed a concept of self yet. No wonder we love to be around them! Who was it who described what a baby experiences as “oceanic oneness”? Not sure. But before a person learns to feel separate from its environment, there is no differentiation between “my” skin, “your” skin and the air between us. We are all connected.

Drawing helps recall the baby’s way of experiencing life. The things we observe become more clearly related to everything else. When you’re drawing a tomato, you can’t simultaneously be deciding when to eat it, what it cost, who might like it as a gift, or how many more days before the first frost. You’re only “thinking” about shapes and spaces and lights and shadows. Not only does the tomato start to fade as a definable object, but you start to fade as a definable entity as well! Who you are and what time it is and the car horns out the window all seem to fade away. Now that we remember what life was like as a baby, why not perpetuate it as a way of being now?

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Tags: Alan Watt, babies, drawing, life, oceanic oneness, spirituality, tomato