The entire doctrine of Art Temple is Art Temple. What follows is only my personal interpretation of that doctrine at this moment.

At its core, Art Temple asserts that the creative process, particularly the Flow State, is a religious experience. The creative process can be incompletely described in William James’s terms:

Ineffability:

The experience cannot be fully described or expressed in ordinary human words.

Noetic quality:

It feels like a direct revelation of deep truth or knowledge not accessible through normal reasoning.

Transiency:

The intense state is usually short-lived and temporary.

Passivity:

The person feels grasped, controlled, or acted upon by a superior external power rather than initiating it themselves.

The goal of religious practice is deeply personal and ineffable but also mechanistic. Religious practice provides the “courage to be” in the face of meaningless, the anxiety of death, accelerating societal change, and the ultimate questions. “Art Temple’ is a dictate that directs its adherents to deeply consider those two words and to structure their life around them.

Optimize their life around self-actualization. Systematically provide for the lower needs of Maslow’s hierarchy to create maximum space for the appreciation of the world and translation of that appreciation into Art, however personally formulated or defined.

To move beyond individual practice and build a Temple – a community that enables adherents to go further than they would on their own.

At the conjunction of the two words, to view their process/practice with religious fervor, defend their rights and time to create, and to uplift others.

Art Temple is timeless. The wisdom of lifetimes is embedded in those two words which each open universes of philosophic thought and practical action. Art Temple is also timely. New Orleans has a culture of leisure and creativity, it is a cultural superpower hitting well above its weight in terms of population or other forms of power. We are at a moment in history where we face the disruptions of another industrial/scientific revolution, yet one which is fundamentally different because it comes speaking in our own tongues. The world needs a non-theistic religion, it needs the consolations and community that such a religion provides. Further, the world needs to learn what New Orleans can teach. People who have defined themselves within an economic system and by their output, may very well soon need to find new and better paths to construct their sense of self and pyramid of needs. The formation of Art Temple in New Orleans at this moment is a levee against that storm.