In art, especially when you’re just learning the advanced levels, as I was at Otis Art Institute on that fateful day in 1967, you eventually learn about “denying the form”. What this means is that you create an illusion, generally a three-dimensional illusion on canvas, such as a landscape oil painting, and then you paint big numbers and letters all over it, jolting the viewer back to the two-dimensional canvas, rather than the deep landscape underneath it.

Well, it happened to my beautiful Ashram, as I predicted it must. I by no means want to discourage builders, but they must learn, not just go wild. Frank Lloyd Wright really had something there when he expressed the opinion that a house should not just be planted down anywhere in any shape — it should take into consideration the environment into which it is going. It’s not just the Purple Penis and the Flying Fairy Ball — in themselves there’s nothing wrong with them in a private region or property, but this is not private, and you are not encouraged to go wild with self-expression; it’s a place of work.

I know it seems absurd of me to point out things like that as glaring examples of inappropriate style in the Ashram, but those examples go a long way toward explaining what I mean here. Continue reading →