During an Ecstasy, LSD or mushroom experience, many people feel unbounded compassion for others and themselves. During a trip, the typical boundaries of our identity dissolve and you're able to experience your unity with all dimensions of reality simultaneously. It can be overwhelming, but it can also be a guidepost and affirmation of the soul's mission in life. A good trip can help us see and feel how perfect, beautiful and precious the world is, despite news reports to the contrary we get from CNN.

When artists give form to revelation, their art can advance, deepen and potentially transform the consciousness of their community.

Art can be a medium for people to discover universal spirit, with imagery not isolated to one particular wisdom path, but pointing to the underlying truth that they all transmit.

The journey of the soul is a vast, interconnected web, a meshwork of beings that are all working out their individual karmas in a collective gumbo, retaining the special flavor in each bite of life. But, the mystery of where we're going, in terms of whether we're going to have a planet that's worth living on after we finish abusing it, whether we'll wake up in time and stop ruining the water, land and skies is a big question mark.

The many faces of Collective Vision united by the mandalic eye-field suggest both expansion of consciousness and sharing of consciousness with other beings. The painting was based on a profoundly ego dissolving entheogenic mystical trance where I heard the words, 'Infinite Oneness... the Oneness should never forget the Infinitude and the Infinitude should never forget the Oneness...'

Enlightenment is not so much a hard-won achievement, much less a "creation," but instead is deep relaxation and recovery of our natural condition. You come to see the evolution of the soul, the soul's journey, as a realization of what has always been there in the first place.

The artist's mission is to make the soul perceptible. Our scientific, materialist culture trains us to develop the eyes of outer perception. Visionary art encourages the development of our inner sight. To find the visionary realm, we use the intuitive inner eye: The eye of contemplation; the eye of the soul. All the inspiring ideas we have as artists originate here.