TUTUNUI-WANANGA: "CETACEAN RAINBOW CONVERGENCE" [(Tutunui Wananga Kaliqatsi)] JEFF PHILLIPS (2009)

This painting, done with acrylic on water-colour paper, approx. 60 by 80 cm, is a step towards a film/beyond-film project I am working on which will attempt to journey inside the minds of the whales, to help us understand and appreciate what it’s like to be them.

This painting illustrates three key dimensions to this understanding: their awareness of and interaction with the “cosmic context” within which life as we know it exists, here on Earth; the unity of oceanic consciousness based on sound; and the dangerous effects and side-effects of human industrial civilization which is inflicting pain and suffering on them, as well as interfering with their life-processes, of which our knowledge is minimal.

The sun, of course, is the dominant energy influence; here we see the moon, planets, a comet and the Milky Way exchanging energy/information, with each other and with the whales. Shown here also are plasma discharges, or “interplanetary lightning” between the planets, which some researchers today believe may have been the origin of human myths about “dragons and gods battling in the sky.” The cetaceans may have similar “mythologies” or even direct knowledge or understanding of these and other cosmic processes unknown to us; with their more highly advanced CNS’s, they may also possess memory capacities far beyond ours. The whales may be highly aware of changes in the solar constant or fluctuations in the spectrum of wave-forms impinging on the Earth, as well as being intimate with her “heart-beat.” They may actually be able to “hear” what Kepler called “the music of the spheres” in ways that are inaudible or imperceptible to us.

The ocean, particularly at any degree of depth below the surface, is essentially an acoustic environment, as light does not penetrate very far; most marine life-forms, consequently, have highly developed abilities to use sound, to “see”, to sense, and to communicate. Sound as a form of vibrational energy travels much faster and more intensely in water (higher density) than in air (lower density). Cetaceans use sound in many complex ways, none of which are directly comparable to how we use sound. They can perform stereo echo-location, to determine distance, velocity, and qualitative information about each other, other life-forms, geological features, or human artifacts; they can transmit a “shock-wave” of sound from their heads, as well, to stun fish. From my experience of swimming with dolphins and playing them recorded music in their own frequency-domain, I think that they “feel” sound with their whole bodies. The ancient Greeks wrote extensively about dolphins’ love of music. Humans and cetaceans both have acute vision and hearing, but we are more visual and they are more acoustic.

That cetaceans communicate with each other, both intra- and inter-species (remember, cetacea is an order, just like primates) is undeniable; but to say that they use anything called “language” is a completely unintelligent anthropomorphic projection. Their systems of communication are incomprehensible to us, regardless of what some researchers may boast; “language” is performed by the tongue, but cetaceans send out sound directly through their heads. People who know them well agree that they have highly-developed “telepathic” abilities; and some speculate that they use “acoustic holography.”

My belief is that they have deep and fundamental understandings of a “reality” that is far more expansive than ours; that they don’t need mathematics, geometry, calendars or symbols for this understanding; and that they are not imprisoned by the web of self-delusion so comprehensively woven by homo sapiens. Their advanced social relationships, and, in particular, the fact that they do not kill members of their own species, testify to an “intelligence” far beyond that which we claim as uniquely our own.

In the lower left corner you see the “six-fingered hand of industrial civilization” and representations of what it is inflicting on the cetacean and oceanic communities: the land is covered with solid-state circuitry-looking structures; an “all-seeing” microwave tower transmits its lethal “wi-fi” and mobile-phone rays; factories and nuclear power plants belch out toxic by-products; an atomic explosion releases megatons of isotopes into the atmosphere, already irradiated by legions of military and commercial satellites. The six fingers of the homo-cosm could represent the major threats to the health of cetaceans: whaling/harpoons, which are the only publicized threats to whales but in reality affect whales in general least of all; pollution in the form of waste-products, run-off, and spills; toxicity due to presence/high concentrations of a host of chemicals, e.g., pesticides, discarded military ordnance, including chemical and biological weapons as well as radio-active waste; drift nets and trawlers; noise from any motorized boats or ships, as well as from seismic testing explosions; and low-frequency active sonar, or LFAS, which U.S. submarines use, allegedly “to detect silent submarines” but which really functions as an anti-whale weapon, as the extreme sound levels it generates, on the order of 160 db with “kill zones” the size of Texas, explode their inner-ears.

Ultimately, in this vision, the whales and all life in the ocean are protected by a full-spectrum rainbow continuum, which is generated through an interaction of cetacean sound artistry and emanations from the Hunab Ku (center of the galaxy) mediated by the sun and other stars near us. This is the fabled “rainbow bridge” prophesied in native American traditions. They are shown here “singing”…we don’t have words to describe what they do with sound…yet…but this is the closest approximation we have…they are “singing” vibrations of love and healing to everyone, on land, in the sea, and in the heavens…to help us all awaken from our lethal sleep-walking and to learn to use the “ultimate technology” which we are in ways that it’s meant to be used: for spiritual creativity.

“Tutunui-wananga” is Maori for “the personification of the knowledge of whales”; “Kali” is the Hindu deity of death and destruction, in the latter stages of whose yuga we are said to be now, as reckoned by some calendrical systems; and “koyaanisqatsi” is the Hopi word for “life out of balance”, the period of time they say we are now in, where everything runs amuk and the Earth eventually “cleanses” herself of all that is not in harmony with life.

Paleontologists agree that the cetaceans have been around in pretty much their present forms for on the order of 30 million years; during this time they may have seen terrestrial life-forms come and go, as the land-based environment is more volatile and less stable than the oceanic. Life-forms on land are more highly bombarded by energies originating outside the Earth, and subject to mutation from these energies; water is very good at blocking these vibrations.

Someday we might be able to see ourselves as they “see” us; if we exist long enough to achieve this level of conscious communion, the revelations it brings could be of far greater consequence than the highly-touted “contact with an extraterrestrial civilization” that pop-astronomers have long awaited. In fact, the cetaceans literally are an “extra-terrestrial”, i.e., “away from land”, intelligence…here and now on the same planet as us. I tend to think that really, we’re on their planet.

The first and greatest step towards “communication” is awareness and acknowledgement of the problems that WE are creating for them, then STOPPING all these things so that they can live healthfully again, free from the effects of our aggression, greed, waste, and stupidity.

I seriously doubt that the cetaceans would refer to us in the same way we refer to ourselves: “man, the wise.”