This series of four paintings is a visual response to the content of Chris Bache’s course The Birth of the Diamond Soul, offering different images of the reincarnating soul both inside and outside the influence of time and space, as well as an homage to the devastation of the ecological crisis and how it may be the catalyst for the forging of the Diamond Soul.
THE OVERSOUL
The Oversoul is a term used by Bache in his book Lifecycles to describe the larger soul overseeing, but also incorporating, each incarnating human life. It is simultaneously a single entity, but also a family of entities nested within each other, and ultimately nested within the larger and larger spheres of existence. This painting is one representation of the Oversoul, pictured as a nautilus, an image Bache provided in class. The chambers of the nautilus each represent a human incarnation, yet the whole shell is the full soul. I have depicted a waiting fetus gestating within each chamber as a symbol of these lives. The life about to be born resides in the outermost chamber, with a diamond in potentia within his heart. The diamond represents the Diamond Soul being forged slowly over the course of each lifetime. A second diamond resides in the center of the nautilus representing the ultimate birth of the Diamond Soul at the end of the incarnational process.
The pantheon of planets within the nautilus and the zodiacal signs surrounding it indicate the archetypal influences on each life and upon the soul as a whole, each chamber of the nautilus having a different perspective and relationship to the signs and planets that characterize that particular life. The baby about to be born residing in the outermost chamber is within the realm of Pisces, both as a fetus in the aquatic realm of the womb, but also as a symbol of our current times since we are in the Age of Pisces.
The vision of this painting came to me nearly in complete form when I began contemplating the nautilus as a metaphor for the Oversoul. To my delight, each of the zodiacal signs took on a life of their own as I painted them, as I had not pictured their exact form before drawing them in. I was particularly surprised by the form Sagittarius took, as a horseshoe doubling as a bow with an arrow. The animals also each took on their own personality seemingly independent of my intentions for them. The real surprise came as the baby being born into the Age of Pisces, for it was pure synchronous chance that the nautilus opened into the sign of Pisces, yet it seemed to fit perfectly with the concept behind the painting.
THE DIAMOND SOUL NEBULA
In an effort to visualize the concept of the Diamond Soul, Bache introduced us to several images from the natural world that might represent parts of the Diamond Soul, ranging from blossoming flowers to nebulae. This particular nebula, the Cat’s Eye Nebula, is one that conveys the idea in an especially evocative way, with its ethereal explosion and heavenly sacrificial blooming. The core of the nebula, as can be seen in all the images captured of it, is a pure white space resembling a diamond.
I found in my attempts to paint this nebula with watercolor that portraying the light and darkness, the veiled colors of the celestial event, was much more difficult than I had previously expected and took more than one try. When one looks at a photograph of a nebula it is the qualities of the whole that are so compelling, but in painting it I had the experience of becoming intimately familiar with each part, trying to understand where the colors blend and where they do not, yet also attempting to capture the whole as well. The only adjustment I made from the image as I painted it was emphasizing the diamond at the heart, forged in the layers upon layers of light and color.
DROUGHT AND HOPE
This painting of a drought-ridden desert with a single sapling growing in it is less an image of the Diamond Soul, but rather of the birth canal humanity seems to be entering before such soul transformation is possible. The painting is a representation of the changes rapidly being wrought upon the globe by human-induced climate change, and was particularly inspired by Bill McKibben’s book Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. McKibben provides the data that clearly demonstrates that global warming is no longer a future threat, it is a current reality. On a personal level this understanding was reinforced by a road trip I took across the American Continent this July while creating the concepts for this gallery. From Nevada to Michigan temperatures soared above 100° F, usually averaging at 104° but sometimes even reaching 108°. Fields were dry and often barren, and many cornfields showed yellowing leaves coated in a layer of dust. Yet oil wells continued to pump in these same fields by the roadside, and every building we entered was blasting arctic temperatures of air conditioning, all fueled by coal and oil burning power plants.
In the painting a young woman is bending over an olive sapling, seemingly watering it with her tears. It is ambiguous if this is the last plant left growing in this barren desert, or if it is the first that has managed to survive. I chose the olive as this single plant because of the great lineage of symbolism connected to the olive, particularly in the Western tradition. The olive is the tree of Athens, mythically a gift from the Grecian goddess Athena who gave it to provide wood, oil, and fruit to the people of Athens. In return they named their city-state after her. Athens is the birthplace of democracy and as such the olive may also symbolize the democratic process. The olive is part of the painting to pose the question of the role of democracy, or perhaps its absence, in the onset and unfolding of the ecological crisis.
The olive is also a symbol from the Hebrew tradition, a sign of hope in the Old Testament. When Noah sends a dove from the Ark to search for signs of land, the dove returns upon the second journey with an olive branch. The olive thus is the first growing plant after a devastating environmental catastrophe, the Great Flood, and also able to emerge out of a desert, but in the biblical case it is a desert of sea water.
The woman’s body is painted in a multitude of colors to represent all races that will be affected by the ravages of climate change, yet it also has an ethereal quality to it, almost resembling the sparkling surface of a diamond, as perhaps she is approaching the stage of a Diamond Soul.
Finally, the labyrinth in the background represents the circuitous route of the human journey, of the soul’s journey, and of our pathway to learning and wisdom.
BREATHING TIME
Breathing Time was inspired by a meditative exercise presented by Bache during the Diamond Soul course in which each breath we took represented one hundred years, or approximately one human life. Eventually we brought the movement of our hands into this meditation, each expansion and contraction of the hands 
representing a lifetime. The energy created by this movement we slowly gathered into a sphere at our centers, then held it like a ball of light, before pressing the energy into our hearts and letting it fill our bodies. This painting is a visual representation of that 
meditation as I saw it during the exercise itself.
In the painting, within the arcs of energy created by the breath and the moving hands are revealed faces, each one the face of a previous life. The faces are the color of the murky, nebulaic background indicating that the air may be packed full of these faces, full of lifetimes, but only the ones that are swept over with the meditative energy are revealed in that moment. There may be an infinity of faces present, just as we likely have an infinity of lifetimes to our souls.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bache, Christopher M. Lifecycles: Reincarnation and the Web of Life. New York, NY: Paragon House, 1994.
Bache, Christopher M. Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps to a Deep Ecology of Mind. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000.
Grof, Stanislav. Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000.
Grof, Stanislav. The Cosmic Game: Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998.
McKibben, Bill. Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2011.
Becca Tarnas 