ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at rethinking artistic consciousness from the frame of three key traditional Indian concepts — hrdayavisranti, equilibrium; ananda, transcendental joy; and sahrdaya, the aesthete who is one at heart with the artist. It reframes ethical ecological creativity by embedding it in rta, a unifying principle of natural law. The chapter seeks to explore two processes in the cultivation of creativity as an intrinsic ecological consciousness: educating the artist and the aesthete, and cultivating the relationship between the artist and the aesthete through three stages of consciousness. It draws out Indian theories that relate to what practitioners of Hindu thought traditions have lost as knowledge systems due to colonialism and further because of rapid growth, globalization, and homogenization. The artistic Indian tradition referred to throughout the chapter largely draws from Hindu traditional thought.
