FROM DILIP MUKERJEA'S ITINERANT TOOLBOX: MAGIC MANDALA

PURPOSE:

To get a stream of ideas from a solitary seed. Rapid radiation of creative combinations emerge from a compact, easy to follow evolving map that shapes itself into a mandala. Very powerful for breaking out of mental blocks and coming up with utterly unexpected solutions.

The number of potentially progressive combinations of steps that make up the processes or components of products is virtually inexhaustible.

The origin of the mandala has been explained by Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

He points out that the original historical incidence of a mandala was in the form of a circle symbol (called mandala in Sanskrit). These symbols are originally associated with agrarian cultures.

Carl Gustav Jung was an expert in this domain, and throws additional light on the theme.

To quote Alan Watts: “A mandala is essentially a circle, usually divided into four quarters, or into multiples of four, and embodies, as it were, the general theme of integration of a community.”

I have amplified the concept to embrace the world of ideas, where continual integration of concepts, via say, the Magic Mandala, can lead to an infinity of ideas. The four-section structure keeps evolving towards greater emergence of new thought patterns, and thus, new ideas.

Procedure for Completing the Mandala

1 Write your objective in the centre of the mandala.

2 Then spin off four associations, ideas or attributes, each of which must be written (or drawn) in the four surrounding triangles, marked 1, 2, 3, & 4. These triangles have been created by the rotated square that surrounds the initial one.

3 Now combine the entries and place them in their surrounding triangles:

~ for 1 & 2, place it in the north-west triangle
~ for 2 & 3, place it in the north-east triangle
~ for 3 & 4, place it in the south-east triangle
~ for 1 & 4, place it in the south-west triangle

Then further combine, expanding as before:

~ for 1 & 2 with 1 & 4, so that 1, 2, 4 is placed in the west triangle
~ for 1 & 2 with 2 & 3, so that 1, 2, 3 is placed in the north triangle
~ for 2 & 3 with 3 & 4, so that 2, 3, 4 is placed in the east triangle
~ for 3 & 4 with 1 & 4, so that 1, 3, 4 is placed in the south triangle

Continue likewise for the last four (outermost) triangles, which will contain the combinations of 1, 2, 3 & 4.

[To be continued in the Next Post. Excerpted from 'Surfing the Intellect: Building Intellectual Capital for a Knowledge Economy', by Dilip Mukerjea. All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]