Eyes closed if you like. Nothing is recorded or sent. The screen stays on while it runs.
How it goes
- One leaf, a pencil, any paper.
- Look at the leaf. Its outline. Its veins. Where it meets the stem. Touch for each.
- Now draw it. Put the phone down. Touch when the drawing is done.
- The leaf and the drawing side by side. What did the hand see? Stay. Hold.
- When you are ready, hold again, and look at the leaf once more, the way you went.
Care
- There is no score and nothing is right or wrong. Whatever you missed is only noticed.
- Eyes may stay open the whole time.
- Any flower, any leaf, any thing near you will do.
Sri Aurobindo, to someone afraid of the emptiness that came in concentration:
Consciousness is not dissolved; it is the limits of the consciousness that are dissolved.Letters on Yoga III, CWSA 30, p. 276
Where this comes from
These are Sri Aurobindo's exercises, from A System of National Education, written in 1910 about the teacher and the child. Here they are given to a grown man, because the Mother says the education of the senses “should never cease”.
The order on the screen, and the way back through what was seen, are ours. They have not been tested. We claim no result from them.
Sri Aurobindo, in the same book, on why drawing belongs to the training of the senses. Not for skill:
Imitation by the hand ensures accuracy of observation.Early Cultural Writings, CWSA 1, p. 403
Sri Aurobindo, in A System of National Education (1910), on why the senses err. The fault, he says, is never in the organ:
In themselves the organs do their work perfectly. The eye gives the right form, the ear the correct sound, the palate the right taste, the skin the right touch, the nose the right smell.Early Cultural Writings, CWSA 1, p. 397