'cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cosmos'

Jordan Belson.

He regards the films not as exterior entities, but literally as
extensions of his own consciousness. "I first have to see the images
somewhere," he says, "within or without or somewhere. I mean I
don't make them up. My whole aesthetic rests on discovering what's
there and trying to discover what it all means in terms of relating to
my own experience in the world of objective reality. I can't just
dismiss these films as audio-visual exercises. They obviously mean
something, and in a sense everything I've learned in life has been
through my efforts to find out what these things mean."
He has been a serious student of Buddhism for many years and
has committed himself to a rigorous Yoga discipline. He began
experimenting with peyote and other hallucinogens more than fifteen
years ago. Recently his interests have developed equally in the
directions of inner space (Mahayana Buddhism) and outer space
(interstellar and galactic astrophysics). Thus by bringing together
Eastern theology, Western science, and consciousness-expanding
drug experiences, Belson predates the front ranks of avant-garde art
today in which the three elements converge. Like the ancient
alchemists he is a true visionary, but one whose visions are
manifested in concrete reality, however nonordinary it might be.
Teilhard de Chardin has employed the term ultra-hominization to
indicate the probable future stage of evolution in which man will have
so far transcended himself that he will require some new appellation.
Taking Chardin's vision as a point of departure, Louis Pauwels has
surmised: "No doubt there are already among us the products of this
mutation, or at least men who have already taken some steps along
the road which we shall all be traveling one day.'' It requires only a
shift in perspective to realize that Belson is taking those steps.


Em.