Hazrat Inayat Khan
Vol. 10, Art: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
1. The Essence of Art
Many think that art is something different from nature, but it would be better to say that art is the completion of nature. One may ask how man can improve upon nature which is made by God, but the fact is that God Himself, through man, finishes His creation in art. As all the different elements are God's vehicles, as all the trees and plants are His instruments through which He creates, so art is the medium of God through which God Himself completes His creation.
No doubt not all so-called art is necessarily art. By looking at true art man is able to see the realization of the prayer, "Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." Throughout the whole of creation, from one thing to another, the Creator has worked through evolution. In man the Creator has, so to speak, completed nature; yet the creative faculty is still working through man, and thus art is the ultimate step in creation. Although in fact all that man creates, scientifically or artistically, is art, those objects which are produced with a sense of beauty and which appeal to the sense of beauty in man, are the main expression of this creative faculty.
Besides being the creative power of God, art is the expression of the soul of the artist. An artist cannot give out what he has not collected, although man ignores the way this is done. The artist's soul conceives, and the artist produces only that which his soul recognizes as having been conceived. Once it is understood that the artist not only produces but also conceives, then it is not difficult for a man whose heart is awakened to see into the soul of an artist. For art in color, in line, is nothing but the echo of his soul. If the soul of the artist is going through torture his picture gives us the feeling of awe; if the soul of the artist is enjoying harmony we will see harmony in his colors, in the lines. What does this show? It shows that the soul works automatically through the brush of the artist. The more deeply the artist is touched by the beauty that his soul conceives from outside, the greater is the appeal of that beauty to those who see his work.
What is it in line and color which has such an influence on man's faculties? The vibrations which the color produces thrill the centers, the centers of the intuitive faculties which are hidden in the body. A person looks at a color and immediately feels thrilled by it. Each degree of vibration that the various colors produce is different, and therefore their influence too is different. Yet while one person may be open to that effect and influence, another is so blocked that colors make little impression upon him. For the same reason women are more responsive to color and line than men, for a woman is responsive by nature, a man is expressive; therefore a woman receives the impression of color more readily than a man who is apt to repel it. But at the same time a man with fine feeling, with the intuitive faculty awakened, will respond to color, while a man whose faculties are not yet opened does not.
Strong colors produce more distinct vibrations, their effect is more noticeable than that of soft colors, and therefore it is natural that strong colors can make an impression upon every soul; but in order to distinguish the impression made by soft colors delicacy of sense is required. For instance the simple words of everyday language are understood by anyone, but the finer shades which follow the words are not understood by everybody. Therefore color, which is only a color and nothing else to ordinary people, has its special value, its degrees of influence, for a person with a fine sense.
The harmony of color is based on the same principles as the harmony of music. The reason is that music is audible vibrations while color is the visible form of vibrations. From the metaphysical point of view, color has a great significance in man's life. The first thing to be understood in connection with color is that the different colors come from the essence of light. All the different colors are different degrees of light, but as there are three aspects of light this sometimes produces confusion in the mind of those who have not given thought to the subject. One aspect of light manifests through color; it is the radiance of the color itself. The next aspect is when the sun or something else
Art: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow throws its light upon the color; the light of the color responds to that light. And the third light is the light of the eyes which see; therefore any given color is not the same to everybody, not only because the degree of light of every person is different, or the light which falls on the subject is different, or the degree of the color is different, but also because the element which that particular color represents produces a certain degree of response in an individual.
According to the mystical idea there are four principal elements which can be distinguished and one which is indistinct. The distinct elements are earth, water, fire, and air. They are not elements in the sense in which a scientist would use this word, but according to the meaning that the mystic attaches to it. The indistinct element is the ether. All these elements are in the body of man, in his mind, and in his deeper self. The whole edifice of an individual existence is built by means of these five distinct elements, and it is not necessary for a certain element which is predominant in one plane of existence, to continue to be so on all other planes. It is possible for there to be harmony between the elements which are predominant on the inner plane and those which are predominant on the outer plane. In short, it is according to the working of the different elements in one's being that one is responsive to the different colors which represent the different elements.
From the point of view of a mystic, yellow is the color of the earth, green or white the color of the water element, red that of the fire element, and blue of the air element. If asked what the color of the ether element is the mystic would answer grey, became by grey one may think of anything one likes. It is most interesting for a student of color to see that all colors are, so to speak, different shades of light; it shows that light itself has manifested in variety, in the form of many colors.
Another important question is that of line. Many lovers or students of art feel the great influence of a line, the effect that a line can have. A vertical line, a horizontal one, a curve, a circle, all make such a difference in the form. And the more one studies to what extent line makes a difference, the more one will find that the secret of all beauty is in the line. But it is difficult to say what form or what line is the right form or line, and man has to accept that what one cannot learn by study, intuition can teach.
The only explanation that one can give, from the mystical point of view, about the secret of line is that the effect of a certain line brings the inner and the outer planes of the human being into such a condition that, while he looks at the line, he is, so to speak, under the spell of that line. This can be understood through the secret of concentration: that every object man thinks about, even if only for a moment, has an effect upon his whole being.
There is a harmony of lines, and this is even more difficult and complex to understand than harmony of color, for the harmony of lines reaches deeper than the harmony of color. If a room is beautifully furnished with costly furniture, but these things are not kept in harmony according to the science of lines, we feel a kind of confusion in the room. It is the same with clothes. A dress may be very costly or beautiful in color, but if it lacks line it lacks real beauty. Therefore in art line is the principal thing; it is the secret of art and of its charm, and only the artist who has conceived the beauty of line can express it in his art.
One aspect of art is shown when the artist tries to copy exactly what he sees. An artist is contemplative, and it is not a small thing to be able to copy the object exactly. Then the success of this artist is assured, because with all man's cravings for something new, what he really wants is something he has already seen. Is it not wonderful, is it not a great thing to be able to copy nature as it is, to produce in the soul of man that which exists in nature?
A further aspect of art is the improvement on nature which the artist makes by exaggeration; and the benefit of this art is more through attraction than impression. No doubt in this form of art the artist can fulfil his soul's purpose, but at the same time he may get far away from nature; and the further he goes the more he destroys the beauty of art, for nature and art must go hand in hand.
Art has still another aspect and that is symbolism. Symbolism has not come from the human intellect, for it is born of intuition. The finer the soul, the better it is equipped in some way or other to understand symbolical ideas. A free soul always dreams symbolical dreams, and when the soul becomes finer still it can interpret the dream, understanding the meaning of that symbolism. The artist who produces in his art a symbolical idea has learned it from what he has seen in nature and has interpreted it in his art. This is real inspiration. The finer the artist is, the finer the symbols he produces.
In every work of art one can observe three factors: its surface, its length and width, and its depth; but I do not mean this in the literal sense of these words. The surface is what the picture itself is, the length and the width are the story that it tells, and the depth is the meaning that it reveals. Therefore the best way of studying and appreciating the works of an artist is to take these three elements into consideration. Art is a very vast subject.
2. The Divinity of Art
Art may be defined as having four aspects.
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One aspect of art may be called imitative art, the tendency and ability to produce as exactly as possible, on the canvas or in the clay something which one sees. This is the first stage, and one which leads the artist further on the path of art. In order to develop this faculty the mind must be fully concentrated. When the artist lacks concentration he cannot observe objects and their beauty keenly, and therefore he is not able to reproduce them exactly as he sees them. Concentration has such great power that a concentrated person can penetrate into an object, and can see not only the outside of it but also the inside. In other words a concentrated person not only sees the form but its spirit. That is the fullness of observation, and it comes by concentration. Whenever the artist cannot imitate nature, cannot copy an object exactly, it shows that he lacks concentration.
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The next aspect of art is suggestive art. This can be divided into two kinds: first an art which directly suggests a certain idea, so that as soon as we see the picture we can see what it says, what it explains, what it represents; and the other kind which is expressed in symbols, an art which through a certain symbology expresses a great wisdom. This wisdom is covered; and the more one looks at the picture and the more one studies it, the more it reveals the idea, the wisdom, the thought that is hidden in it. Such art is a revelation.
The art of ancient Egypt, of Greece, and especially the art of the Mongolians and of India, was chiefly symbolical art. In such periods, when other pictures were not produced and books were not printed, this was the only means of keeping wisdom alive and handing it on to the coming generations. This was done by the master artists who were inspired by spiritual wisdom and who tried to guide humanity. With hammer and chisel they carved in wood and engraved on the rocks, and left their work in the caves of the mountains and in the old temples and palaces, an art that expresses wisdom. When one visits one of these caves where wisdom is expressed in the realm of art, one will find that one symbol can reveal more than a volume of written manuscript. And in this way the sculptures of a temple or of a mountain cave were like a library with thousands of books. The one who can read, can find divine wisdom there, expressed distinctly and with great intelligence and wit.
The ideas of the Hindus about gods and goddesses and the different postures in which they stand or sit, the way Buddha holds his hands, all these express to him who knows a teaching which is connected with the culture of the spirit.
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The third aspect of art is the creative aspect. In this aspect an artist creates a theme and improvises upon that theme as he goes on working. In this way the artist creates wisdom and power. No doubt, the higher the art the less it is appreciated and the less it is studied, and the majority will always seem to be ignorant of its meaning. Nevertheless, the artist who reaches that plane where he can create, can from that moment call himself an artist. Creating is different from imitating or suggesting. In the development of art imitating is the first step, suggesting is the second step, and creating is the third step.
In India fifty years ago there was an artist, the brother of the Maharaja of Travancore. After having read the sacred traditions of the Hindus, he wondered if it would not be a wise thing to reproduce these legends and stories in the realm of art. So he devoted all his life to this idea, and made perhaps twenty or thirty pictures of the ancient traditions. Since that time India has understood and appreciated its ancient spiritual traditions far better than ever before. By expressing the sacred traditions in the form of art he brought a new outlook and a new spiritual message to the people of India. This shows how much more effect art can have upon people if a spiritual idea is embodied in it.
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The fourth aspect of art can only be developed through meditation, because it comes like a miracle. It is no longer only art but is a direct expression of the soul. This fourth aspect may be called giving life to the work of art. In the first three aspects the work of art is only art, but in the fourth aspect it becomes something living. And the artist who reaches this stage where he can give life to what he creates has reached the highest grade, which is the mastery of art. No artist can reach this stage only by the practice of his art; it is essential for him to know that in order to accomplish great things in the realm of art he needs spiritual development.
But in order to develop art in the real sense of the word, one need not be an artist, one need not have that particular vocation in life. Whatever be one's vocation, art is necessary just the same. It is wrong to think that art is not needed in one's social or domestic life, in business, in industry, in one's profession. It is because of the division that people have made between art and other walks of life that life has become devoid of beauty. And in this way art has been very much neglected, except by those who pretend to appreciate it and who have perhaps some leisure in which to give thought and time to it. But even they are very often ignorant of the real beauty and value of art; they take an interest in it only because they want to be able to say that they are fond of art. It is because of this that artists sometimes lack the opportunity of expressing their soul through their art, being hampered by this lack of appreciation. Others want to commercialize their art, but art is always above material values. When art has to be limited by material values and by seeking the approbation of those who do not understand it, it has to suffer; instead of evolving it declines. But even in practical life art has great scope. Think for instance how much a woman can do in her everyday life in her home with her artistic gifts. She can make it beautiful and comfortable; she can train her children to have better taste; and whatever her means may be, even her manner can produce beauty, harmony, and happiness in her home. It is the same thing in one's office, in industry, in business, in whatever one does. If there is a regard for beauty and harmony one can make one's own business or profession, one's life and one's work, more beautiful, thereby producing greater happiness for oneself and for others.
When the spirit of art develops, this development does not produce anything outwardly, but it does so inwardly. And what is this? It is the art of personality. In a real artist a distinct personality is developed which expresses itself in everything he does. In other words, an artist need not paint a picture in order to prove himself an artist. When he has reached a certain stage of art his thought, his speech, his word, his voice, his movements, his action, everything he does becomes art. The value of the art of personality is so great that no one in this world, whatever be his occupation, can say that he does not need to develop or to learn it. If he is a business man, if he is a lawyer, if he is in industry, if he is a shopkeeper, or working in an office or factory, whatever be his position, this art of personality will help him. If he is a soldier he has a chance to become a general, if he is a worker in a factory he may one day be the head of it. Besides success he has the magnetism to win everyone he meets because of the art of personality.
The art of personality shows in one's movements, in one's manner, in words, in speech, in thought, and in feeling. On the other hand, an awkward person does everything wrong. His movements are awkward, and every move he makes is unattractive. The one who has not yet acquired the art of speaking will offend even without intending to; and in everyday life do we not see people insulting others unintentionally because they do not know the art of saying without saying?
Other arts cannot be compared with the art of personality. Character is not born with a man; his character is built up after he comes here. Even if a person can call himself a human being, he has still to know that greater art which may be rightly called a true religion. For there is another grade to strive for, and that grade is the personality of God. As soon as one seeks for the personality of God, one sees that it is different from a human personality; for with the personality of man, man can only take a human point of view, whereas with the personality of God man has to take God's point of view. And it is those personalities with God's point of view who, whenever they have come on earth, have not only taught humanity, but have given an example to humanity by their lives. They came and went--some known, some unknown--but each one of them was accepted by some and rejected by others. None of them was accepted or rejected by the whole of humanity. Yet in spite of this, truth will prove by itself victorious, for victory belongs to nothing else.
Victory which comes from falsehood is a false victory; only a true victory belongs to truth, and as man probes more and more into the depths of life and its secrets he will realize this more fully. Falsehood, whatever its apparent success, has its limitations and its end. For at every step the false person will feel falseness; and with every step a person takes towards falsehood he will feel his feet growing heavier and heavier when he encounters the truth, while those who walk towards the truth will feel their feet becoming lighter with every step they take. And it is by learning the art of life and by practicing it that one is led on the path of truth to that goal which is the longing of every soul.
Finally there is the art of thought. The more one activates one's thought, one's imagination, the more capable one is of expressing them in the realm of art. Therefore the beautifying of one's thought is the greatest source of development in art. And when we have understood this, we will come to the conclusion that whether the outer works of art are poetry or music or painting or sculpture, it is the art of personality which is the greatest of all arts; but it is an art which cannot be perfected without developing the spirit of sympathy. This is the principal and most important thing in life. The deeper our sympathy, the greater our power and inspiration will become to bring our art to perfection.
3. Art and Religion
Very few in the world today link religion with art, or art with religion. But in point of fact art is much more important than the average person realizes it to be, in spite of the saying that art is what man makes and nature is what God makes. I would prefer to say that nature is what God makes as God, and art is what God makes as man. The artist who has arrived at some perfection in his art, whatever his art may be, will come to realize that it is not he who ever achieved anything; it is someone else who came forward every time. And when the artist produces a perfect thing, he finds it difficult to imagine that it has been produced by him; he can do nothing but bow his head in humility before that unseen power and wisdom which takes his body, his heart, his brain, and his eyes as its instrument. Whenever beauty is produced in art, be it music or poetry or painting or writing or anything else, one must never think that man produced it. It is through man that God completes His creation, thus there is nothing that is done in this world or in heaven which is not divine immanence, which is not the divine creation. It is the separating of that divine work which causes the perplexity that separates man from his Lord.
In the first place, everything that we see in this world, all the occupations that we engage in willingly or unwillingly, lead us to accomplish a certain purpose. But it is a fact that there are certain things in life by which we accomplish a greater purpose and which can only be accomplished by an inspiration from within. Art is a domain in which inspiration manifests with great facility. In order to become spiritual, to attain inspiration, it is not necessary that a man should be very religious or specially good; what is necessary is love of beauty. What is art? Art is the creation of beauty in whatever form it is created. As long as an artist thinks that whatever he creates in the form of art is his own creation, and as long as he is vain about his creation, he has not learned true art. For true art can only come on one condition, and that is that the artist forgets himself; that he forgets himself in the vision of beauty. And there is one condition through which his art can be still more valuable, and that is when the artist begins to recognize the divine in his art. As long as the artist has not realized this he has not touched the perfection of art.
In reality art is nature re-expressed, perfecting the beauty which is already there. Nature in no way lacks beauty; nature is perfect and therefore is most exalting. But it is beyond man's power to see nature as a whole. He only sees a part of it, and everything that is only seen in part is limited; it is this limitation which limits the beauty for us. As man sees only a limited beauty in nature his first impulse is to perfect it, and the means he adopts to improve upon it he calls art. The soul of man is the light of God, and so this impulse to improve upon nature which arises in the heart of man is also a divine impulse. Therefore art is divine, for all beauty is divine.
It is said in the Bible, "God is love", and again, "In God we live and move and have our being." The word of the Prophet is, "God is beautiful, and He loves beauty." If we take these two teachings and unite them as one, we shall find that God Himself is love and at the same time beauty. This being so, in whatever direction man strives in life it leads towards a certain beauty. If he wishes to be rich or to have a high position, whatever may be his pursuit in life, in some form or other it is in order to have beauty. No doubt the idea of beauty is different for each individual; one considers beauty to consist of a beautiful environment, another that it means being dressed in beautiful clothes; yet another thinks that grace of movement, of manner, or of expression is beauty. One person sees beauty in character, another in virtue; one finds beauty in verse, another in the realm of music; one admires the beauty which is external, another seeks beauty within. And it is the method of creating beauty, under whatever aspect, which is called art.
Man is always seeking for beauty, and yet he is unaware of the treasure of beauty which is hidden in his own heart. He strives after it throughout his whole life. It is as if he were in pursuit of the horizon: the further he proceeds, the further the horizon has moved away. For there are two aims: the one is real and the other false. That which is false is momentary, transitory, and unreliable; wealth, power, fame, and position are all snatched from one hand by the other. Therefore in the language of the mystic this is called Maya; its nature is to change constantly. But our soul's longing is to hold on to something, to grasp something which we can depend upon. If man seeks a position, he feels, "If only I could find something which would be permanent, something I could depend upon." If he seeks a friend his first thought is to find a friend upon whom he can depend. Constancy is more valuable than anything else in friendship. Man wants something in life upon which he can rely; and this shows, whether he believes in a deity or not, that he is constantly seeking for God. He seeks for Him not knowing that he is seeking for God. Nevertheless, every soul is pursuing some reality, something to hold on to, trying to grasp something which will prove dependable, a beauty that cannot change and that one can always look upon as one's own, a beauty that one feels will last forever. And where can one find it? Within one's own heart. And it is the art of finding that beauty, developing, improving, spreading that beauty through life, and allowing it to manifest before the inner and outer view, which one calls the art of the mystic.
The artist, in the true sense of the word, is the king of the kingdom which is even greater than the kingdoms of the earth. There is a story known in the East of Farabi, the great singer, who was invited to the court of the Amir of Bokhara. The Amir welcomed him very warmly at the court, and, as the singer entered, went to the door to receive him. On coming into the throne-room the Amir asked him to take a seat. "But where shall I sit?" said the singer. "Sit," the Amir said, "in any place that may seem fitting to you." On hearing this, Farabi took the seat of the king. No doubt this astonished the Amir very much, but after hearing the singer's art he felt that even his own seat was not fitting, for he understood that his kingdom had a certain limitation, whereas the kingdom of the artist is wherever beauty prevails. As beauty is everywhere, so the kingdom of the artist is everywhere.
But art is only a door, a door through which one can enter a still wider area. At different times the religious have considered art to be something outside them; this has very often been due to a kind of fanaticism on the part of religious authorities. It is not only in the East, but in the West as well, that one finds a tendency to separate art from religion. This does not mean that some great teacher of religion has taught it; it has come only from people who have not realized religion apart from its form. No one who has touched the depths of religion can ever deny the fact that religion itself is an art, an art which accomplishes the greatest thing in man's life. And there can be no greater error than to make this art devoid of beauty.
In ancient times in all the Hindu and Buddhist temples and pagodas there was music, there was poetry, there was sculpture, and there was painting. In those times there were no printing presses, and no books could be published on philosophy and religion; but if one can find any scriptures expressing the ancient religious and philosophical ideas, they are in the ancient art. For instance, whatever sign can be found of the mysticism and the religion of ancient Egypt, of which so much has been said and so little is known, it is not in the manuscripts but in its art. Also the ideas of the Sanskrit age are still to be found in India engraved on the carved stones and rocks and temples. Travellers from the Western world often go to the East in order to see to what a degree of perfection Eastern art attained; but very few really know that art not only strove for perfection in those days, but that it was used as a means of communication by those who could not read.
The art of ancient Greece too is a sign and proof of great perfection in divine wisdom. Every movement that we see in Greek art is not only a graceful movement but has a meaning; and every statue expresses a certain meaning in its attitude, if only a person can read it. From this we learn that intuition is necessary both for the making of a work of art and for the understanding of it; and that is the very thing which the human race today seems to be losing more than at any other time in the world's history. One might ask why man has lost that intuitive faculty. It is because he has become so absorbed in material gain that he has become as it were intoxicated by the worldly life; and intuition, which is his birthright and his own property, is lost from his view. This does not mean that it is gone from him; it only means that it has become buried in his own heart.
We are vehicles or instruments that respond. If we respond to goodness, goodness becomes our property. If we respond to evil, then evil becomes our property. If we respond to love, then love becomes our possession. If we respond to hatred, hatred becomes our life. And if we respond to the things of the earth so much that our whole life becomes absorbed in worldly things, then it is quite natural that we should not respond to those riches which are within us and yet so far removed from us. Intuition is not something that a person can learn by reading books, nor is intuition a thing that one can buy and sell. Intuition is the very self and the deepest self of man, and it can be realized by that soberness which " is so very desirable in life. Absence of intuition means absence of soberness.
4. Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
Progress is Circular
It is most interesting to notice that East and West have a different or perhaps contrary opinion on the subject of the world's evolution. While in the West man thinks that we are becoming more evolved, that we have progressed and are going forward compared with our forefathers, in the East man believes that compared with our forefathers we are going backward and downward, that we are worse.
What is the truth about this? From one point of view there have never been such good communications in the world as nowadays: the telegraph and telephone, ships like palaces floating on the water, aeroplane, the gramophone, and then the radio uniting mankind in one moment at any distance; besides the development that is taking place in every branch of science, of art, there are also the modern systems, organizations, and classifications. When one looks at all this one cannot doubt for one moment that according to modern opinion the world is evolving but when we come to delicate thought and sentiment, good manners, knightly chivalry, kingly attitude, nobleness of spirit, generosity of heart, the tendency to sacrifice, depth of feeling, and keenness of insight, we are certain that what the man of the East says is true.
We learn from this that both opinions are right. We are evolving, and yet at the same time going backward. In certain things we are evolving, and in certain things we are going backward; and this brings us to the philosophical conception that it is not only the world which is round, but that everything is round; that everything moves in circles. For instance the early dawn is not very different from the late evening, age is not very different from infancy, when we realize how innocence develops as one grows old and one arrives at a stage where one shows the same expression of the angelic spheres which one had as an infant. It is just like the octave: seven notes and then the key-note comes again.
It is not going upward or downward, it is going in a circle. But we are accustomed to say of everything that it is either going upward or downward. We may agree with those who say that we are going upward, or we may agree with those who hold that we are going downward, but in reality progress does not mean continually going upward; progress means going upward and downward at the same time; progress should be described by a circle and not by a straight Line. If we look at it from this point of view, everything in the world has a circular aspect, for the real picture of motion, of movement, is a circle.
Three Aspects of Knowledge
There are three aspects of knowledge: self-knowledge, the knowledge of another person, and the knowledge of the collectivity. Also, there are three ways of looking at the world: its past, its present, and its future. By yesterday is meant the past; by today is meant the present; and by tomorrow is meant the future. The knowledge of the past gives wisdom; the knowledge of the present gives power; the knowledge of the future gives peace. The one who is anxious to acquire knowledge must consider all these three aspects to be equally important.
For those who are treading the spiritual path it is as necessary to think of the world, especially at the present time, as it is to think of someone else and of themselves. No one should think that by position or rank, by profession or occupation, by condition or situation, he is too limited to think of the world; but each of us should realize that we are a self-sufficient particle of the whole. Each particle is responsible for the evolution of the world in proportion to the place it occupies in the cosmos; and everything a man naturally knows first about himself, and then about another, is of the greatest importance when he also begins to know something about the world at large. What he should know is what the world was, what the world is now, and what it will be in the future.
In the self-knowledge of past and present and future one has to learn
- what was the origin of the soul,
- how the soul has formed itself, how it has come to manifest, the knowledge of the process of manifestation
- and the different stages through which it has passed towards manifestation.
Regarding the present one should learn
- one's own condition,
- the condition of one's spirit, of one's mind and body,
- one's situation in life, and one's relationship to others;
- one should also realize how far the soul reaches in the spiritual spheres.
And regarding the future one should find the answers to the questions,
- "Am I preparing for something that is to come, and what is there to come?
- If life is a journey, what is the object of this journey?
- What is the destination and how shall I reach it?
- What preparations must I make for this journey and what must I carry to make the journey easy?
- What are the difficulties that I may meet on my way?"
It is the understanding of these questions which is the knowledge of the future. And it is self-knowledge which helps man to know the past, the present, and the future of another. For those who know themselves another person is like an open book; they can read him clearly; his past is clear to them, and also his present and his future.
There are many ways in which people try to know about past, present, and future: by astrology, by palmistry, by physiognomy, by reading the features, and in many other ways. Although all such methods can often be helpful and give us some knowledge-for knowledge is within our reach and we only have to ask for it and it is given--yet by self-realization we can understand this knowledge so clearly at a certain stage, that no other method is necessary. It becomes natural; as it is natural for the eyes to see, so it becomes natural for the heart to see into the past, present, and future.
Looking into the past is just like looking deep down from great heights. It means probing the depths of life. Looking into the present is just like observing a wide horizon, as wide as we can see. Looking into the future is like looking upward to the zenith. And the feeling we experience is different with each of these three ways of looking. One gives knowledge; the other gives power; and the third gives peace, as I said before. Knowledge is man's birthright and it is the sustenance of the soul. It is to gather knowledge that the soul has come on earth; the acquisition of knowledge is the only purpose the soul has in coming here. In knowledge lies the satisfaction of the soul, the fulfillment of the purpose of life.
5. The Ideal of Art
When we study the art of the Middle Ages and the psychology behind it, it seems that the principal aim of the artist at that time was to produce an object of worship. Restricted within the laws of conventionality, having a deeply rooted belief in the sacredness of the artist's task, he considered his art as the expression of his greatest devotion. And any sensitive person will certainly feel that the art of the Middle Ages has an atmosphere, a feeling, a magnetism which grows day after day. No doubt one can only appreciate this art if one does not compare it with the art of today; as Majnun said, "To see Leila you must borrow my eyes." So we must borrow the eyes of the people of the Middle Ages, the feeling of the people who lived at that time, and then look at their art; for in its primitive development there is a mystery hidden which could not be reproduced today.
When we think about the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, we notice that the wave coming from ancient Greece to Italy brought new life; yet the art which was once made for worship was then made for admiration. Art rose to great heights, bringing the spirit of classical antiquity into a new realm of expression. Nevertheless, one can say that in the Middle Ages art was directed towards God, that in the art of the Renaissance God was included, but that afterwards it was produced without God. And without God essentially there is no art. The gulf that we find between our time and the time when art was in its greatest glory, is because the art of today is without God. The artist of the Renaissance had not given up God, but afterwards God was forgotten.
Painting, sculpture, any form of art, if it is not directed towards a higher ideal must go downward; it cannot rise because there is no ladder. It is the ideal which helps everything to go upward, and without the ideal everything goes downward. One can see the reason why people become more materialistic: beauty naturally belongs to heaven; on the earth it is only reflected; and when the connection with heaven is broken, when the back is turned towards heaven, then the eyes become focused on the earth and slowly and gradually beauty begins to disappear. Thus in a way the divergence between the Renaissance and our time has been caused by materialism, by commercialism, and by the lack of heavenly inspiration.
No doubt the need that has been felt in the hearts of the lovers of beauty has been working on the inner planes, and now today it is beginning to show itself. But how? Not in the form of beauty; it is the absence of beauty that is now beginning to be felt. And the result of this is that the artist thinks that there should be a new start in the world of art, that a new kind of beauty should be found, a new expression; but when he tries to find it he mostly misses the mark, for when inspiration is lacking and the work of art is forced by effort, what is produced is mechanical. One artist thinks, "Everything must be in angles; that creates a new beauty"; and another says, "No, everything must be just colors; everything must be expressive by itself"; another artist says, "Everything must be just lines without any detail; everyone should find out for himself what it represents"; and again another says, "Everything must remain in an unfinished state; that is very artistic." In this way it is just like many horses trying to take different directions in order to arrive at a certain place.
There seems to be no ideal today, but the day when the ideal again directs the hand of the artist, art will progress more rapidly, and the promise of the art of the future will then be fulfilled. That something which begins with a promise of touching the heights, of manifesting in perfection has another voice; it has another soul and another expression. Today the artist is striving for it, his soul is longing for it, but he has not yet found it. And the very reason why he has not found it is that he is thinking too hard. Art does not require hard thinking, nor does poetry or music. True art always comes with ease, with relaxation; it comes naturally. The artist should not be fighting with beauty or struggling with inspiration.
What is most to be deplored at the present time is the unconscious and yet predominant commercial influence hovering like a cloud over the art of today. There is a general feeling that every month a new fashion must arise; there must be a new fashion in everything; and this inclination, saturated with commercialism, destroys the roots of natural and beautiful art. Why strive for something new? Life is always new and always old. It is always the same and yet it is always new.
To think that we must forget, overlook, and destroy all the thought of the past is a still greater error. When artists start with this error, always wanting to make something new, then they make commonplace things, things which are far removed from beauty. And the admirers of art, those who buy, do not mind as long as it is new. Most of them only acquire a work of art because it is the fashion, not because it is beautiful; and thereby a great load of responsibility is laid upon the artist as well as upon those who present his work to the world. It is this pressure which spoils the work of artistic souls, who should have time to think about beauty and who should have leisure to feel deeply. Instead of this anxiety is thrown upon them, a responsibility is forced upon them to bring out something new. The day when the world of art forgets the word "new", a new life will come into it.
It seems a pity that one aspect of art is much neglected nowadays: the making of frescoes. It is to be hoped that one day it will be developed again and take a more prominent place in the world of art. But fresco painting should be finished like any other way of painting, as it was done by the great masters in Italy who did not leave anything unfinished. In any form of art there should be a desire on the part of the artist to finish his work, not to keep it unfinished, which is against perfection. The lack of desire to finish something is only laziness, lethargy, negligence. All of us human beings have our limitations. It is very easy to say, "It may be unfinished, but just look at it, it is beautiful!" But it is not right. Everything we do we should wish to finish to the best of our ability, even though it will always remain unfinished when we look at it from the point of view of beauty itself. We do not need to keep it unfinished on purpose; it remains unfinished without our trying, when compared with perfection.
Contemporary decorative art seems to represent a new step towards the unknown. No doubt the aim of decorative art should be to produce an impression without going into detail. But all the same it should first be produced in the depths of the artist's own heart, and then he should put his thought-power into the lines that he draws. If an artist only wants to make an effect externally, by trying to make something attractive through making it different, it will never look beautiful and it will never suggest what he wants it to suggest.
Today when an artist tries to express an idea in decorative art, he tries to avoid all details and depict his subject by only a few lines. But when those lines have not sprung from the depths of his heart, when they are not inspired, they do not become a universal language, they do not make another person feel at once that this is the idea which the artist intended to produce. It must be given extra thought, so that these lines are not only lines, but that they express something, are suggestive of something, are living; and then they instantly produce the meaning of the artist in the mind of the one who looks at them. If an object in decorative art is not made with this inspiration, it is not complete, and then it does not suggest anything but is bewildering and will confuse many people. And at this time, if even art is confusing, where else can one go? There is nowhere else. Art should be revealing and inspiring instead of confusing.
Hazrat Inayat Khan uses the term "decorative art" not only in the usual sense, but also to denote sketches and paintings in which the subject is suggested rather than elaborated in full detail.
There was a time when decorative art was highly developed, for instance in China where it reached its zenith. When the Chinese artist wished to decorate an object with a picture of the sky, he drew it with one line; and one can feel it. Where does it come from? From a mental effort? It comes from inspiration. It is one thing to think about an idea and another thing to feel the idea, and once the artist begins to feel the idea he is able to express it. Even if it is not finished, it is finished in the feeling of the artist, and that completes the lines. Those who want to will see the truth of it; they will be able to read it; they will know the object of the picture.
There is a new aspect of art nowadays which is called clairvoyant, mediumistic, or spiritualistic art. One may speak of the bewildering effect of art, but this is the most bewildering of all! One day a person put some colors on paper, and showed it to me, saying, "People cannot understand this deep idea, but you will understand it. It is very deep, it has come from some clairvoyant source.'I looked at it; there were many colors, that was all one could say, and they were not even blending harmoniously with one another; they were only striking. The person who had painted it looked at me and waited for my opinion. He said, "What do you think of it?" So I said, "It is a picture of the end of the world." And he was very pleased with this answer. Some people who claim clairvoyance try to paint what they call the other side, but to do this they would have to bring the paint and canvas from the other side too. The clairvoyant cannot paint the other side with the brush of this world; if he tried it would be a mistake.
Very often people also produce confusing patterns in decorative art. Maybe that in that pattern there is a flower, and perhaps that flower looks like a man's face; and if one looks at that flower from another angle, it is like the face of a monkey or of a tiger. If this is not confusing, what is it? And such patterns are often commercialized and used for wallpaper and other decorative purposes. It is this confusion of the-artist's mind which commerce has taken over and made use of, and if confusion is used for commercial purposes, then where are we going if not towards confusion, greater and greater confusion helped by art, by so-called art?
The combination of inharmonious colors has very often an inharmonious effect on the nerves, on the thought, on the mind; and this gives scope to those imaginative artists who are, however, without beauty, without art, without knowledge of life, without any psychological conception of it. It makes their art popular; by claiming that it is quite different from anything else, they can sell their art better. Art should be simple; it should be expressive; it should also be inspiring and revealing.
6. Painting
The art of painting is as ancient as the human race. It has existed in all ages, though not in the same form as today. There was a time when the Tibetans and the Chinese produced the most wonderful paintings. In these paintings the principal motive was to give a form to abstract thought; and therefore very often, especially in Chinese painting, there are forms which we do not recognize. They were meant to be the personification of power, of compassion, of joy, of sorrow, and similar concepts. They pictured joy or sorrow as an animal; the imagery of the Chinese artist even went so far as to create the form of a new creature to represent a certain idea. Thus the Chinese dragon represents power, and is at the same time a conception of the Almighty. And the Chinese dragon is a symbol of unity, for it has the tail of a fish, the wings of a bird, the fangs of a lion, and the face of a mythical animal, together with the eyes of a man.
This shows that all the different aspects of living beings together make one being; and one being means the oneness of the whole of manifestation. It is a lesson in unity taught by the symbolism of the Chinese dragon.
In India the upper end of the sacred Indian instrument, the vina, was often carved in the form of a dragon's head. The reason for this custom was to remind the listeners that when a musician played his music and they heard it, they should not think that it was the artist who played and that the instrument was only a vina, but their impression should be that it was the music of the whole being, of the divine Being, so that music might be considered not as a kind of pastime but as a source of elevation.
The most wonderful-aspect of Chinese art has always been its drawings. The more one studies Chinese art the more one admires the fineness of the line. The greatest artists of China could give an impression of the sky in only a few lines. It is a wonderful art, a very suggestive art. And how very effective it is, the making of something beautiful in just a few lines, drawn with inspiration and intelligence, and suggesting a certain form, the artist only indicating the detail!
Japan followed China. The Japanese are an artistic people, and they have tried to produce even better things. What is good about their art is that they love daintiness, fineness; everything that comes from there is very delicate and refined. But even that will only continue for a certain time; the present condition of the Japanese shows the great interest they have in the things of the world, and this will increase; even what little art is left there now will disappear. It is one thing to be an artist, and it is another to be materialistic; these two do not go together.
The Tibetans have the same kind of art as the Chinese, but not as developed. The reason is that in China there was an empire, and there was luxury, appreciation of art, and a high ideal; in Tibet there was only religious thought. And in all periods and in all countries, if religious thought alone has been the central theme of life, then it has hampered the progress of art. Nevertheless, Tibetan art has always had the same depth that the Tibetans have in their character. One may take any Tibetan picture and one will always find that there is a magic hidden behind it. And the use the Tibetans made of color is a magic in itself. It is not only the fancy of the artist; it is the attempt of the artist to express the mystery of the object through color. In ancient paintings from Tibet, however primitive, the color or the form always expresses a certain mystery of life.
Ancient Egyptian art developed in its own way, and in accordance with its own character it reached a great height. No doubt as the people of that time were more psychic, more mystical, they did not give the same attention to detail and to the things of the earth as is done today, although the coloring of the old Egyptian objects is exquisite. Color meant a great deal to ancient peoples. They chose color as a medium of expression in a way which is no longer seen. But in order to appreciate the art of the ancient people we must look at it from their point of view.
The Indians did not develop the art of painting in the same way as the Chinese or the ancient Egyptians. They were more drawn to other aspects of art, to sculpture, music, and poetry. Nevertheless there are to be found ancient Indian paintings where the colors are expressive of the five elements; everything expressed by these pictures, every idea or color, has something to do with the five elements. Yellow represents earth, green represents water, red represents fire, blue represents air, and grey represents ether.
It was in Persia that art first developed into something finer and more beautiful than in India; but when Persian art was later brought to India it became richer in color. The pictures of the Mogul emperors and of their families, sometimes painted on ivory, show how conscientious were the artists in reproducing every little detail. Even in the smallest picture one sees that every detail has been painted in. The combination of Persian and Indian art achieved very wonderful results. At the time of the Moguls a picture was a luxury, and that is what the Mogul paintings were.
Nowadays there exists a school of art in Calcutta under the direction of Abanindranath Tagore; this school tries to produce work in the same style as that of the ancient Mogul school. The modern versions that come from this school, however, cannot be compared with the old pictures; yet when we compare them with other modern conceptions of painting we find many things which are quite different. There is at least an extreme fineness about the pictures, a great delicacy of color, and much attention has been given to the line; one discerns an attempt to reach perfection through delicacy. But by all that is said above I do not wish to indicate that ancient art was necessarily superior to modern art; I have only tried to point out what was good in it.
An interesting development in the Western world was the introduction of the idea of light and shade into painting. This was not applied by the ancient artists, and it brought a new life to the world of art and made art more natural. But in modern Western art it often happens that an artist gets hold of an idea and thinks that it is the only idea there is and that there is nothing else besides it. He does not realize that any idea is a part of other ideas, and that many ideas together will make a whole. This has resulted in artistic movements such as cubism, which is derived from a certain impression one may get from the light. Light strikes out in straight" lines and forms angles; and so these artists wanted to paint all the different planes of their pictures in angles. They painted as if the whole world was made like that, in angles.
Other artists say that in painting only color is important, that it is color which must make the form. This also is unnatural. However beautiful color may be it is not sufficient; the picture cannot be complete when it is painted in that way. It is again stubbornness, obstinacy on the part of the artist. He wants to paint something which will strike us, and no doubt color will strike us; but art is not only for striking, art is for giving some beautiful impression, for uplifting our soul; it is for inspiring, not for striking. In painting form is more important than color; the color is an addition to the form. No doubt color touches the emotional side of man, but that is a different thing and is very material. It is not the mission of art to bring man down to earth.
All this shows that the world of art today is in great confusion. The souls of the artists want to bring something new to the world, but at the same time the artists are looking for this where it is not to be found. It is just like looking for the moon on the ground. They are eager, they are striving, they are in earnest; yet they are looking for what they want in the wrong direction. Even if they worked for a hundred years like this, one can be sure that there would be no progress.
Are they wrong in their ideas? No, they are not wrong, but they are limited. They have got hold of one idea; it may be a very good one, but they have pinned themselves to it. They cannot go forward, because they are limited to their own idea; whether people like it or not is irrelevant to them. Besides, though art can be most charming it can also be most deluding. If an artist is strong-minded and convinced of the quality of his own art, he can make people believe that he has invented a new form of art. But where does this new art lead us? What is the mission of art? Is it to delude us, to produce confusion? If there is no beauty, no harmony, no deep feeling, then what is its purpose? If it only strikes our emotions and our passions, or if it only strikes our eyes, then it has nothing to do with art.
No doubt there will come a time when the modern artist will be frightened of his own pictures, and he will awaken to the fact that he must find something else, that this is not the road to follow. The greatest example that we can follow is before us night and day, and that is the work of God. What can be better than God's creation itself? And the artist who bears this in mind that he should imitate the creation of God, is the one who will produce beautiful things.
When God's creation seems to be going to the North and the artist goes to the South, he thinks that he is creating new things. But they are not new, they are wrong. Suppose there came a new wave of musicians who said, "We are not going to accept the seven notes as they are, but we are going to make other notes." Perhaps they will have a following. Some will say, "How interesting, it is something new!" And yet it will not be beautiful, it will not be exalting, it will not help humanity.
The peculiar state of the world today is due to spiritual poverty. It is this which causes all the restlessness and confusion. The extremes in modern art are the result of lack of balance. The soul wishes to express something, but if the soul cannot express what it wants to then there is no contentment, then there will always be suffering. The more a person works, the more he suffers; he suffers because his soul wants to express something and cannot. That is why in the lives of artists there is always so much suffering, because their soul has been born on earth with some ideal which has made them artists, but when they cannot produce that ideal before their eyes, then the soul goes through tortures. Until they come to that stage where they can produce their art to the satisfaction of their own spirit, they will always fall short of the ideal.
The artist has a great mission in the world. He cannot be compared with other human beings, for he is the instrument of God. His mission in life is to create something that will inspire people and will elevate humanity; his work should be an education for the world.
It seems that the general trend of the artist's mind is to become more and more fanciful. No doubt this is natural, yet it would be well if it were remembered that nature is perfect in itself, and that the greater the art the more natural it is; the best art is the simplest. For instance one might point out that Egyptian art makes use of symbols which are not natural at all. But the ancient Egyptian civilization was flourishing at a time when the world was still in a very primitive condition, and therefore we cannot compare the art of that time with modern art which is supposed to be much more evolved. When we look at the pictures of many Indian gods and goddesses, for instance those of Sarasvati and Lakshmi, we see that they have four arms, which certainly is not natural. Yet there are no angles, and no attempt is made to produce something unnatural; every attempt is made to show that even with four arms they are natural beings. In this they are quite different to modern art, where even a man with two arms seems to be most unnatural.
Symbolism is the mature or ripened aspect of art, and if symbolism is used at the time when art is only beginning to develop, it is a drawback; then this art will not flourish. When art is in its infancy it should not touch symbolism, for symbolism should appear as the result of a natural development. It is an inspiration; it becomes natural when the artist becomes natural; then everything he does has a symbolical meaning. But when the artist begins by thinking, "I must apply some symbolism", then he destroys his art. Symbolism should come by itself.. It is not something that one can study or learn; it is nature's language, it is spiritual inspiration, it is in itself revelation. And when a person has spent his life developing his thought and feeling it springs forth naturally, since it is a divine spring of beauty. Then alone the artist is entitled to produce symbolism in his art.
Symbology expresses ideas which are complex and on which one has to ponder, but it has nothing to do with deformity, for deformity will never bring us higher thoughts. No doubt when there is a continual striving to produce something new, this will sooner or later have a result and will bring art up to a higher level; and perhaps that will be a step forward in evolution. But it will not come very soon. Evolution sometimes takes a wrong direction and sometimes a right direction, though in the end it will surely reach its destination. At the same time, the artist could find the way to bring about that result sooner, if he would only keep his thoughts more in the spiritual realm.
7. Sculpture (1)
In all periods of history art has played a prominent part in the life of humanity. With every rise and fall, and with all the different changes that art has gone through, it has always been the soul of life. It cannot be otherwise, for art is an improvement on nature. It is said that nature is made by God and art by man, but at the same time nature is nude by God and art is made by God through man; in other words, art finishes nature. Therefore the artist, whether one considers him evolved or unevolved, is indeed the hand of God; for that which is not to be found in nature the artist adds, and that is why art has often proved to be the steppingstone to God's shrine.
The Sufis have seen God in the realm of love, harmony, and beauty. The tendency towards art shows itself in all three; for beauty is produced through harmony, and if the arrangement of lines or the composition of colors is not harmonious, a thing cannot be beautiful. Harmony creates beauty, and love of beauty results in art; thus art is the practice of that philosophy which Sufism teaches: the philosophy of love, harmony, and beauty.
Today we notice on every side an increasing appreciation and love of the art of sculpture. A great effort is also being made by modern sculptors to produce the art which the soul of the world is seeking for; yet it seems that they are continually seeking for something that is still missing. Today many sculptors look at Greek art with envy, and with the anticipation that they may one day produce again what was produced long ago.
The drawback today is the method of development. Before trying to imitate ancient art, it is first necessary to open the inner eye, to look at life as it really is. A statue is something dead; if one tries to make something exactly like it, it is like imitating something that is dead. The first thing one should understand is what has produced the statue, and one will see that it was inspiration; it was the opening of the inner eye that produced the art of yesterday, and now the sculptors find it hard to produce anything like it. In spite of all the development in sculpture, one finds that fineness, magnetism, and attraction are lacking; and that is because today art is approached from a practical point of view.
Also art cannot be accomplished in the first place by effort; art should come from inspiration. The life of the artist should be easy, without anxiety and worry, without pressure to produce something he should be passive, so that the work of art may come naturally. Then the Creator Himself, who is the Lord of beauty, can use the artist as His pen. No doubt suffering can purify a person and make him more capable of inspiration, but when an artist wants to produce a beautiful work of art, he does not open himself to inspiration by hardening himself and by straining his will.
In ancient times people were Very often inspired through their love of subtlety and beauty. When we study Greek art we find that the Greek people were fine and subtle in perception. From their statues we can observe that they did not lay down their philosophy in rigid, prosaic words. They made a shrine for wisdom in the form of legends and myths; they put the words of truth in a beautiful frame. This shows us the subtlety of their nature, and out of this subtlety a wonderful art was born.
Some of the most ancient statues are to be found in India and China; and by studying these we find that the sculptors had not only finished them in every detail, but had also put magnetism into them. Hundreds and thousands of times people have experienced that some of these statues possess great magnetism, and this shows that the artist of those days was not only an artist; his art also had magic, and an influence that would last for thousands of years. Whenever we go near such statues they have a certain effect; merely by being in their presence, by looking at them, by sitting before them, we can feel their influence which is like that of a living being, or even stronger.
It is therefore not surprising that the Hindus have kept for ages in their temples the images of Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Rama, Krishna, and many others. Even with all their great philosophy and comprehension of life, this art has always helped and inspired them, for it has given them this wonderful influence. When a statue has been worshipped in a shrine for a very long time, this too will magnetize it; yet the statue must have something to attract in the first place in order to make intelligent people inclined to bow before it. It is as if the statue called out, "Come here with all your intelligence, man, and bow before me! I am sitting here full of life and influence, though I do not speak.'
Many stories are told about a sculptor of long ago whose name was Azar. The peculiarity of his art was that as soon as those who were antagonistic to idol-worship saw a statue of a god or a goddess made by Azar, they followed that particular religion. Art conquers humanity without words.
The art of ancient times was almost entirely symbolic. In those days when printing had not even been discovered, the only way in which an idea could be bequeathed to later generations was through the medium of art; so by different symbols the artists expressed the inspiration and the wisdom that were to be left for humanity. That is why we so often find that ancient works of art contain a message. The day will come when people will not be curious only about the artistic aspect of the ancient sculpture, but will begin to read this art as a scripture. No doubt there is already much curiosity everywhere about such art, and a great desire to go and study it in the East, in Egypt, India, and China. So far there is only appreciation of the skill and great fineness and beauty with which it was produced; but the day when the lovers of beauty look at it from a spiritual point of view, they will find in that ancient art an expression of divine wisdom which will again become a source of revelation.
To some extent symbology can be learnt, but symbology does not come to one only by learning; it comes by intuition. Symbolism is a language of intuition; it comes by itself; and suddenly one begins to understand the meaning of the different forms and colors. When it is said that the Twelve Apostles began to know different languages, it only means they knew the language of each person.
Suppose there were a book on symbology, and the book explained the meaning of different symbols; this would only be the opinion of the man who wrote the book. Perhaps all he said was wrong. But when symbolism comes by intuition, then the true meaning of the symbol is revealed. Therefore the knowledge of symbolism is not a form of learning. First the intuitive faculty must be opened and then the whole meaning of the symbols will be understood; and often it will be quite a different meaning from what the object seems to represent. It is a different language; it is learning the language of life.
Essentially symbols have the same meaning for everyone, yet according to the direction in which people are looking their meaning differs. Under the same sun we all see everything more or less alike, and in the same way in the light from within we all can see the meaning of the symbols; the only difference is that between individuals, in other words limitations. This is the reason why the wise very often spoke in symbols; even their jokes were symbolical.
In ancient art one often finds faces that are unlike those of human beings. This only means that the artist adopted an exaggerated way of picturing the features of different human beings in order to bring out their characteristics. Besides when a man looks at a statue which is not very different from the human form, it is just like looking at one's own kind; and when there is no difference one does not get such a clear vision. Clear vision comes from difference. Some artists, especially those of China, therefore adopted this particular method of making sculptures not exactly like human beings, but a little different; and by making them somewhat different they produced a clearness of vision which enabled man to see through it and recognize what he would not have recognized otherwise.
In the same way they made animals of different kinds. Sometimes in ancient art we see animals which are unlike the animals we know; but if they had been familiar animals they would not convey a certain idea to us; making them different helps us to concentrate our mind on some idea. A sculpture like this speaks to us louder than one which we can easily recognize. When the mind sees an object with keen sight and interest, it is ready to receive the lesson which the object is meant to give. That is why many ancient statues appear unusual.
We also see that in ancient works of art great attention was given to detail; wonderful skill was used in producing every detail. Then, when we look at the materials of which the sculptures were made, it is still more wonderful. Many statues made thousands of years ago look as fresh as ever today.
There is no doubt that the art of sculpture stands out and attracts our attention more than any other kind of art. And as soon as the unrest of the world lessens and this age of labor and strife begins to decline, there will be an improvement in the realm of art. People will come to value it more, they will appreciate the artist more, and art will attain greater prominence. As the world evolves there will surely come a time when art will recapture its ancient glory and will again become the means of expressing the divine wisdom. On that day words will not be necessary; art itself will be the source of revelation.
Furthermore, whether the artist knows it or not, what he makes always has an influence. Once when I was visiting Berlin I saw some statuary round the Kaiser's palace, and when I looked at it I thought that it was no wonder that this empire had collapsed. It could not have been otherwise; it was as if the statues had been put there on purpose in order to ruin it! The symbolism which, either consciously or unconsciously, the artist had embodied in these statues was nothing but a source of ruin. Even now or at some future time, if anyone lives there, there will be a downfall; it cannot be otherwise.
Can it be that a thing is beautiful and yet has a bad influence? It is very difficult to say what is beautiful, and sometimes that which one person considers beautiful another thinks very ugly. Also, something which appears most beautiful to many people may have an effect which is just the reverse, like a fruit which looks delicious, but when one eats it, proves to be quite bitter. Therefore one can say that something that is not beautiful in its effect is not really beautiful.
8. Sculpture (2)
In all art there are three stages, and especially in sculpture. The first stage is conception; the next stage is composition; and the third stage is production. If the artist is not capable of conceiving an idea, he cannot go any further. He may try hundreds of times, but he will not arrive at the desired result. The outer world may help to bring about such a conception, but it must actually spring from within. It depends upon the stage of the artist's evolution; according to his evolution he is able to catch, to sense, the rising stream of inspiration which comes from within.
The sculptor's work is of very great importance, for it is an imitation of the art of the Creator, and not always in miniature form. The sculptor's first idea is to make a life-size statue, or perhaps even larger than life-size; and if it is smaller his task is to put so much life into it that it may take the place of a living creature. Thus sculpture is imitating God.
Composition comes from another faculty. Conception is the work of intuition, but even if a person has enough intuition to form an idea, he still needs the faculty of composition to express it. A gifted artist is he who has the gift, the capacity, to compose in his mind that which he wants to bring out. There are many intuitive artists who owing to their particular stage of evolution can perceive an intuition, but if they are not gifted they cannot compose it. That is another talent. No doubt a lover of nature, a keen observer, an admirer of line and curve, a real artist, all have such a gift--the aptitude for composing that which intuition brings in the form of an idea.
The third stage is the production. If a person is not qualified to produce something with his hands, then he may have intuition and he may have the gift of composition, and yet he cannot produce a work of art. That is something else, that is skill; and skill is learned by practice. Human nature is such that it considers everything easy. If one has intuition, one readily thinks that one can also compose; and if one is able to compose a work of art in one's mind, one believes that one can produce it; but, again, producing requires another kind of talent.
Which is the most difficult stage? This cannot be determined for one artist has talent but is without intuition; another artist can compose in his mind and yet is without skill in producing; and there is yet another who has intuition but is lacking in composition and production. In order to combine these three faculties one must be not only an artist, but one must become art itself. Then to the one who is so absorbed in his work that he forgets himself, that capacity, that intuition, that skill, will come naturally; then he begins to do wonders, and his art becomes a perfect expression of what he had in mind.
In the ancient art of Egypt one finds an extraordinary atmosphere. One may take a simple statue which seems to have been made with little skill when compared with the art of ancient Greece, but when it is studied from a psychological point of view, one finds something living in it. It is not only a work of art but life has been put into it; and this shows that the tendency of the ancient artists was to give life to "their thought. Their sculpture may not show a high degree of skill, yet it is a phenomenon. If a piece of rock which was carved thousands of years ago can produce an atmosphere, this proves that the artist who made it gave it life. And the more man investigates the ancient history of Egypt, the more he will find that the Egyptians possessed the art of putting life into objects.
Coming to the art of India, the artists there made use of sculpture to produce scriptures; every work of art in India is a scripture, and we can read one or another philosophical truth in it. The carvings and engravings in the temples, the gods and goddesses, their several hands each holding some symbolical object, all have a deep meaning, and by the study of this meaning one may arrive at realization. Thus the ancient temples of India were not only places where people worshipped; but they were at the same time scriptures, places where people were inspired if their insight was keen enough to observe what was behind the symbols. The tourists who go there now and admire the artistic aspect of these sculptures, do not see what is behind them nor with what idea they were made. The artists did not give their attention only to the artistic side, for the principal motive behind these sculptures was to express certain aspects of the philosophy of life.
One finds this form of art all over India, for instance near Bombay in the caves of Elephanta, and in a place called Ajanta near Aurangabad. There are also examples near Darjeeling and in Nepal and its surroundings; and when one goes farther into Tibet, one finds that the ancient philosophy has been preserved for thousands of years in the form of sculpture, ready to be revealed to souls which are evolved enough to read what was written there.
In the East, ancient China was considered to have the highest artistic skill. What is most estimable in the art of China is its imagery; the Chinese artist produced the picture of patience, of greed, of wrath, the image of war, the image of peace, all kinds of abstract ideas like these, in the form of an animal or of man. It is a peculiar talent which is not to be found in every artist, as man naturally is inclined to picture what he is familiar with; but an artist who can imagine something entirely different from what one is accustomed to see has quite a different talent. When we look at it from this point of view it is very admirable, and the Chinese were indeed able to make most interesting works of art in this way.
All that we are accustomed to see is easy to admire, because our eyes are used to it; but any form that is different seems odd to us, something strange. The Chinese have given beauty to forms which have never been seen but which attract the eye and the mind all the same; and the thoughtful will stop to think what is behind them. By their imagery the Chinese artists attempted to bring the abstract into objective form. And to a greater or lesser degree the world has admired the ancient art of China, and yet has not wholly understood its meaning. Nowadays experts on Chinese art are trying to explain it to Western art lovers, but it is not the art expert who can explain the art of China. It needs psychological explanation, it needs the mystical touch; for it has come from a mind which is deep and thoughtful, the mind of a people which has suffered for thousands of years and has been in quest of the truth.
But as to beauty, there is no art that can be compared with that of Greece. Ancient Greek art stands alone in its beauty, in its fineness. Its peculiarity is the movement in it. It seems as if movement had been given to the statue and that the statue has been moving for thousands of years. The gracefulness, the delicacy, and at the same time the mysticism of ancient Greek art is wonderful. Every action that we can observe in this statuary reveals some meaning. Greek imagery, too, fills us with wonder and admiration.
When we come to the art of sculpture today, it seems as if the artist is searching; he is trying to reach something which he knows is absent. The soul of the sculptor is seeking for something which seems lost. First of all, by lack of appreciation around him, the artist is discouraged, and next he is put in the midst of the business world; and that relief which should be given to the heart of the artist, so that he may think of art and nothing else, is not to be found today. There was not so much thought of competition in ancient times, there was not a fixed price for art. Art was invaluable. The admirers of ancient art never considered a work of art as having a fixed price. They always thought that they could never give enough for real art. In that way art progressed; it was admired.
Besides the direction of art today is not of the same nature as in ancient times. The direction of ancient art was towards spiritual realization. Love, harmony, and beauty the artist saw in their highest aspects. And when the artist loses that direction then he comes down to earth; instead of going upward he is going downward. There is no doubt that humanity nowadays is less religious. Every step that we think we are taking in a new direction seems further removed from religion; in everything we see that humanity is forgetting religion, and the educated and intellectual people even wish to avoid any conversation on the subject. Many feel that to pronounce the name of God puts a great burden upon them; they think it is so heavy; and when this subject comes up in a conversation, they say "higher forces", "higher powers", or sometimes with great difficulty they say "gods."
Simply to say "God" is too simple; they believe they are much too evolved to say "God." A wrong conception of democracy has also resulted in modern writers writing against the ideal of God, an ideal which was pictured and beautified by the great prophets of Ben Israel and all the saints and sages. That ideal was the stepping-stone for them; but these writers say that by speaking, for instance, of the wrath of God, God was pictured in a cruel form. They think that the intelligent people of today would have expressed it better, would have given it a more beautiful form; but instead of giving it a more beautiful form they have destroyed the ideal and thus impoverished mankind. With the ideal lost, there is nothing to hold on to except objects which the senses can perceive and touch.
This does not mean that Western art has not developed since the Renaissance. It has evolved at every step, but still it seems that there is something lacking; and what needs to be added to modern art is not yet there. Modern art needs so much to make it perfect, and no one can feel this as deeply as an artist feels it today. The scientist is sooner contented with what little he discovers, but the better the work of art is the more the artist feels that there is something still missing; his heart is longing all through his life to produce something more than that. Consciously or unconsciously every artist is craving for that something which is missing. And if this goes on, no doubt the artist will find it; and on the day when the mystery is found, art will again become a language.
The meditative quality and the practice of concentration should be developed in art, and also the higher ideal; but this material world forms a barrier to all these. It stands in the Way of the artist's progress. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that a real artist is always spiritually inclined; he is only hindered by the world, and therefore it is possible that tomorrow the art of sculpture will evolve; it will evolve in fineness and in beauty, and sculptors will also develop their imagery. Then art will culminate in that great achievement when the artist will really be able to produce a living statue.
The motive behind the whole of creation is to put life into everything; that is its sole object. In other words, every rock is longing for the day when it will burst out as a volcano, and when all that is valuable in it will come out. Sulphur, diamonds, gold, and silver, everything that is in its heart must come out one day, that is its purpose.
Every tree is longing for the day it will bear fruit. Love expresses itself through every channel, and it manifests outwardly in order that God may see Himself face to face. And so it is with a work of art. People think that it is the artist who has made it; in reality it is God who has perfected it. As it is God's pleasure to create the world, so it is also God's pleasure to create through pen and brush and chisel, to give life to what is lifeless. If there is life it is God. And what is God? God is love; and thus the desire of that love is to manifest in the form of beauty in the realm of art.
9. Architecture (1)
Sculpture and painting complete architecture. The idea of building a home did not develop only with the creation of the human race; it had already begun with the first manifestation. And if we look into life and its laws with keen insight, we shall see that the whole of creation is built on this one principle: that of making a home for every word, for every thought, for every sound, for every idea, and for every color. No color, sound, or thought could be recognized, no feeling could be distinguished, if they did not have a home to live in. For instance it is the breath which manifests as the voice, and it is the voice which manifests as a word; but in order to manifest as the voice the breath must have the mouth as its home; and for the voice to manifest as a word, as a sound, all that the mouth contains is necessary. That again is a home; it is a home conveniently made for the voice to turn into a word.
Then the voice, the word, needs a home in order to become audible; and that home is the ear. If something of what the ear should contain is missing, then the sound is not fully audible. The breath must have lungs and tubes through which it can manifest; they are its home. The blood must have channels through which it can circulate for the same reason, and in the same way the mind is the home of thought, the heart is the home of feeling, and the soul is the home of the divine light, the divine Spirit.
From the moment that the sound begins its journey and passes through the different spheres, turning into an individual, the entire phenomenon of this process consists in making a home. First the soul makes a home of the body which is taken from the angelic spheres, and by taking that body it becomes an angel. A being, a life which had no name and no distinctive features, obtained them when it gathered round itself a cover and took that cover as its home.
In the same way in the sphere of the jinn the soul gathers round itself a home that gives it an accommodation; and that home is its being. It is the same with the human body. The soul has gathered round itself another home, and it is of this home in which the soul lives that man says, "It is I." The Hindus have called this home an Akasha, which means accommodation. Thus accommodation is not only a need but it is indispensable; nothing can be born, composed, constructed, or molded without its accommodation. The Sufis have called this accommodation the temple: there is a temple of breath, a temple of sound, a temple of hearing, a temple of seeing; and there is a temple of God's spirit which is the body. And each part of the body is again a temple which accommodates a thought, a feeling, a faculty, or a sense.
When we look at it in this light, we see that when man made a home for himself to live in, it was the second step. The first step was that he made himself, the next step was that he made a home to live in. It is his second step because the four walls and the roof, all that is in front of him and around him, form his personality, his character. Today, when there is so much hotel life everywhere and home life is much less known, when the home is so little appreciated, people cannot understand how sacred the idea of house-building really is. Besides the uniformity of these times takes away a great deal of the beauty of the home. We change the world into a prison when we begin to lose our conception of a home: then we think in terms of pigeon-holes where a thousand or more pigeons can be put in and locked up in the evening.
Even when man first began to build the accommodation for himself to live in, the sense of architecture was already advanced, for even the birds very often have greater skill in making nests than man has in what he does. A beautifully built nest is a miracle in itself. The skilful weaving, and the patience with which it is done, the perseverance and good sense that the bird shows, all these teach us that the spirit has developed the art of building a home even before man was created, and thus from his most primitive state he possessed the inborn quality of being able to build proper accommodation for himself.
The art of architecture began with people digging holes in the ground, piling up stones, and making use of mountain caves as houses to dwell in. And the first idea which inspired them to do this was not how it could be made more comfortable for them, more convenient, more beautiful; instead of this their first idea was how it could be made in such a way that they could think more of God. It is with this idea that the art of architecture began. Cutting stones and carving wood, the people made symbols or works of art, pictures or figures that would remind them of spiritual perfection. This was the first thought of primitive man.
Afterwards came the thought of how their home could be made more comfortable, how it could be made so that it would protect them against the weather--storms, excessive heat, cold, and rain. And so the next idea which influenced the building of the house was consideration of the weather, and that influenced all kinds of construction.
But unconsciously the people felt that the house should not be too different from the picture of the world. Naturally, therefore, because the horizon is round, they dug holes which were also round. In ancient Persian poetry they speak of Gardish-i Dunya, which means the roundness of the world. And Gardish does not mean only roundness, but a round action, a circular movement.
The houses were not always round, for sometimes there was an improvement, for instance when an oval opening was made. Even now one will find that among primitive people there are round dwellings; always their first idea is to build their house as they see the world, round, and then later they make it oval. This suggests that first they thought of the world around them, and only later did they think of themselves; for when we look at the form of a human being we see that it is not round but oval.
Then there came the tendency of building steps up to the house. Where did this tendency come from? It was an inherited faculty of the soul to feel that it had descended many steps, so that it had to climb up many steps again to reach the highest temple. The house was the picture of the temple, and the steps were suggestive of going towards the temple, each step being a symbol of a different plane of existence. The most wonderful part of this is that from the most primitive times no house was made without a religious conception of some sort or other. Perhaps the religion was of the lowest type, a very primitive conception of God, yet the house was always at the same time a temple. Later when the people had built more houses they constructed a temple for the community, thinking it would be better to come together in one building for worship. But their first conception was to use their own house as a temple.
The next important thing was the kitchen. There was an ideal behind using one's house as a temple, but the kitchen was a necessity, because in the kitchen the offering was prepared. There again the people had the idea that what they needed was at the same time an offering to God. So in some houses there was worship, and in others there was the kitchen in which to cook food and to offer it to God; and then to eat the food they had prepared for God as it were a blessing, a sacrament. That was the origin of the idea of sacrament, that no one should cook his meal thinking only of how to appease his hunger; and that man should realize, what he had already intuitively felt from the beginning, that there was someone else to offer his food to, who was better and higher and greater than himself and whom he should try to please.
And what was the origin of the idea of sacrifice? There were times when there were famines, when people could not obtain any food except animal food. And the most cruel thing that man can do, to kill an animal, struck even the most primitive man as not being right. But in order to save himself from starving, the only thing he could do was to go hunting, so what he brought home he placed before his gods as a sacrifice.
Naturally the necessity arose for a storeroom in the house, and also for a separate place in which to sleep; later it was thought that those who came to visit should not be taken into the kitchen or into the room where one slept, because these were sacred; yet they had to be taken into the house and not left out in the rain or heat. Therefore a room was made and set apart for guests; and with these few essentials in mind they built their houses.
When primitive people began to think that instead of living in holes in the ground or in caves they should live on the ground, they attempted to make houses of dry leaves, of straw, of reeds, and then of bamboo; a still further development was that they began to cut wood and make boards to build their houses with. And so architecture developed more and more.
The first thing that helped architecture to develop was the worship of God, the second was necessity, and the third love of beauty. Then people discovered the art of painting and the art of sculpture. The latter was dedicated to religion, to their belief, to God; the art of painting was principally dedicated to making pictures of the myths and legends of their race. Nearly all the ancient legends are connected with metaphysics and religion; they are symbolical. Even if they were primitive legends, coming from the earliest races who had not yet developed their symbology, they were symbolical just the same. Every religion contains symbology, and it belongs to metaphysics. That is why the ancient people painted their books of philosophy on their walls in the form of legends, and by their primitive sculpture they gave form to the objects of their behalf and of their worship.
Color can be expressed in two ways. One expression of color is striking and the other is harmonious; one expression is soothing and the other is exciting. And it seems that the primitive people mostly used exciting colors. The more primitive the race, the more exciting the colors they used. This was because they wanted to feel that they existed, which is a hidden tendency in every soul. If a person sits quietly, thinking about something, imagining something, then generally after some time he begins to move one of his legs up and down, or he begins to scratch himself, or to drum on the table. He must be moving in order to give evidence to his consciousness that he is still alive; that is why he performs those actions. Inactivity gives him a thought of death, and action gives him a thought of life.
The purpose of the use of striking colors by primitive races was this, that as soon as a man came home or somebody else came into the house, he should feel that there was a home. In Japan the doors are still painted red, in order that before the host comes to meet a visitor with his warm heart, the red door may welcome him with its warmth. In all ages the striking effect of colors has, naturally, been felt and appreciated most, while their more peaceful, healing, and harmonious effects were not generally understood as the people were mostly not evolved enough to enjoy them. This is why striking colors were mostly used in the beginning of architecture.
As to the furniture and objects that were in use in the houses of the ancient people, they were made of anything that could be obtained from their surroundings: skins of animals, straw, clay for pots and vessels, and other materials. They used pumpkins and animal guts for their musical instruments, bamboo and reed for flutes. In this way a happy home was made which was a kingdom in itself. There they had their kingdom, their God, their temple, and they were as happy, perhaps more happy, than man can be today.
One may ask why, if primitive people were happier than we are, do not the primitive races today show the qualities of the Golden Age but rather of savages. It is because they are affected by the condition of the human race as a whole. Children, animals, and the ignorant, all three, are more affected by the general condition of the world than others; therefore, if the general condition of the world is that it is full of conflict, they will reflect it more. In other words, when new wars are being plotted, the savage people will already be quarrelling and fighting among themselves. It is the condition of mind in the world that affects them, and then they act. Here there is only the planning, while there they are killing and dying.
Will humanity ever return to simple living? Life is an intoxication; and the more intoxicating it is, the more it proceeds from simplicity to complexity. It is the nature of life's intoxication to lead man from simplicity to complexity, and man chooses complexity for himself. When he finds himself surrounded by complexity he thinks that he is caught in it, and then it is very difficult for him to get out of it.
The sages of India give a very beautiful example of this. They say life is like a spider's web; the spider weaves a web, making it more and more complex, weaving and weaving until it is completed. But when the web is finished, then the spider itself is caught in the web and cannot free itself. Its motive was to live there and to catch all the insects that might stray into it. But in the end the spider does not see its desire fulfilled; the end is that the spider itself becomes captive in its own web. And so it is with the ideal of man on earth. He perseveres and tries to make it as complex as possible for himself, and he then enjoys that complexity, he sees it as an improvement, as something wonderful, and he becomes more and more interested in it. But what is the end? That one day he is checked by something, and then he begins to feel that if he had been without all this complexity it would have been a thousand times better.
10. Architecture (2)
If we look at the Egyptian pyramids with open hearts and illuminated souls, they speak to us of the past. They tell us that even if the architecture of that time was not so advanced theoretically, yet it had reached a highly spiritual stage. They stand there as a token of the intelligence of the ancient people, and not only of their inspiration but of the depth of their mind. And if today or in the future, people inquire about the site that was chosen for the pyramids, they will find that it is exactly in the center of the solid part of the earth's surface. At that time communications were not as they are now, and the study of geography was hardly known to the world, yet the Egyptians were able to find the exact center and to construct something there which is unsurpassed in history. What was the meaning of placing the pyramids in the exact center of the earth? The real heart is the solar plexus, and that is to be found in the center of the body which is the shrine of God, and that is why it was necessary for the sacred temple to be in the center of the earth.
The ancient Egyptians had a symbolical point of view in their architecture, and their influence became the principal source of inspiration for the civilizations that followed. Very little is known about ancient Egyptian drawing or painting; nevertheless, in the examples that remain we always discover some mystery, some atmosphere, some magnetism, something very wonderful. And the excavations which are being made today are proving that the Egyptians of that particular period had reached a stage where they were more advanced in art and architecture than any other peoples, and that they were also able to inspire later civilizations.
Egyptian architecture is expressive of mystery. It was a mystical age, and everything the Egyptians did was done without mechanical power; it was done with spiritual power; and that is the reason why what they have made will last after all that others have made has been destroyed, and when all other buildings have vanished from the earth. And it would not be surprising if on the last day, when everything else has been destroyed, the pyramids still remained standing.
It is very interesting to notice that the architecture of the Mongolian races is distinct and peculiar to them, and that it has no resemblance whatever to any other architecture. And what stands out as being most expressive of the people's character is Chinese architecture, including that of Tibet, Assam, Burma, Siam, and Japan. There is a peculiar line, there is a peculiar curve, and there is a peculiar taste in color. This shows the exclusiveness of the Mongolian character, a character which is very distinct and remote. They have followed their tradition to such an extent that every insignificant form that the Mongolians have made has that particular character. They are so attached to the form that belongs to them, that they have been able to retain the type, the character of their architecture for thousands of years. They have never abandoned that form, and they do not change it nor add to it from outside, but they develop it in its own character. In this way Mongolian architecture stands out as something different and distinct, peculiar to itself. The architecture of Persia was influenced by Arabian architecture; and the peculiarity of Persian and Arabian architecture is the dome, which is called in Arabic the Gunbad and the Mehrab. Gunbad means dome, and Mehrab means an arch used in windows and doors which is not exactly round, but is formed of three or five parts; in other words, in five half-circles with the top made by two lines going upward and joining in the center. The interpretation of this form was given by the mystics of Arabia, who called it Qasab-e Kousein, which means the meeting of the eyebrows. When a person looks upward, naturally his eyebrows come closer to each other. The idea is, that as the spirit soars upward the tendency of the soul is to rise from duality to unity, and by working with these two particular forms they have arrived at such perfection that if the same form were continued for a hundred thousand years one could never tire of it.
During the time of the Mogul emperors this architecture of Arabia and Persia was perfected in India. The Moguls, who were worshippers of beauty and very fond of splendor and grandeur, spent enormous wealth in building something which would remain as a token of beauty. In India today the most unique and beautiful signs of the past to be found are the Mogul buildings, for instance Moti Mahal, the mosque in Delhi and, best of all, the Taj Mahal in Agra. It was because of the emperor's great love for Nur-i Jehan that he wished this love to be remembered for ever afterwards, and also he wanted the people to know that he really loved beauty. He spared no effort, no money, no time, to make this building perfect; and when it was finished it became the tomb of Nur-i Jehan. When one looks at it, it not only inspires one with its greatness and richness, but it also tells one of love, of beauty, of patience, of endurance, of an ideal, of joy, and of peace; these are all there. It speaks without a tongue, and it will go on speaking as long as it stands beneath the sun. Every little detail, the smallest piece of marble, was worked most carefully. There is not one inch in the Taj Mahal, of floor or wall or ceiling, which had not been made perfect.
This shows a love of perfection, a love of finishing something, a love of creating something beautiful. Would it have been possible to make such a building if the workmen had been on strike ten times a year? Not even in a century. And if the workmen had insisted on week-end entertainments? No, their pleasure was in what they were making. Each workman realized that what he was making would live for centuries, that it was the greatest blessing, the greatest privilege to be allowed to work at it. That was the spirit of every man who worked there. It was built with joy. One can still find this in its atmosphere, for as soon as one comes near the Taj Mahal one begins to feel joy; it is something living.
The builders have gone, but the work remains, and every artist who has a real sense of architecture will appreciate this. What is earthly gain compared with the thought that the work that one has done will live on and give joy for ages to come? This in itself is a great joy for the artist, because a real artist is not born for this earth; he is born in the sphere of beauty and he lives in that sphere. The things of the earth do not count for him.
In ancient Greek architecture, the Doric, which shows Jelal influence in its character, is expressive of power. And where there is Jelal there must be Jemal too; thus the Ionic architecture is expressive of Greek wisdom and beauty and fineness. And where one finds Jelal and Jemal, one will also find Kemal, and this influence is seen in the Corinthian architecture. No doubt when Jelal and Jemal clash, then there is something lacking on both sides; nevertheless these three aspects of Greek architecture are expressive of Jelal, Jemal, and Kemal.
When we compare the architecture of the Middle Ages with the Roman and the Greek, there again we find these influences. The Jelal influence of Roman architecture shows the ancient Roman characteristics: law and rule; the Jemal influence in Greek architecture shows the Greek love of beauty and wisdom. Gothic is the Kemal expression; however, Gothic architecture has taken its own peculiar form in every country. It seems as if the soil inspired the builders, both the architects and the workmen. The Gothic churches in France are different from those in Germany, and even if there is some resemblance between French and Italian cathedrals, yet there is an individual feeling in every cathedral wherever it may be. Gothic architecture has reigned over the Western countries for a long time, and although by now its influence has disappeared, it has made itself felt in a hidden way during many centuries.
It is very difficult to describe modern architecture. We hesitate to call it beautiful; but to say that it is not beautiful--no, we cannot say that! So instead of calling it beautiful we might call it wonderful. If there is any wonder it is in the immensity of the buildings. They are indeed enormous; the ancient people would never even have dreamed of such buildings. They would be horrified if they saw them. They are also wonderful because in spite of the many floors they consist of, they yet stand so firmly; and then the way in which everything possible is pre-fabricated in order to build very quickly--all this is most wonderful. Yet it is a drawback that only vertical and horizontal lines are to be seen, and when a traveller passes through countries where he finds the same kind of architecture in every city, it is just like looking at the same house over and over again; there is no difference. Instead of wandering through the city he might just as well look at one house and be contented with that.
Everyone must have the same kind of house built on the same plan, but we are not all made the same way. Every person is different and that is what makes life interesting. When every person is different, why should not every house and building be" different? As the architecture of every country is expressive of the character of that country, so the architecture of every house should be expressive of the particular character of the owner of the house and of the man who built it. But when the law of uniformity is forced upon people then there remains no choice in the matter; the choice has been taken away from the architect as well as from the owner of the house.
No doubt one sees a continual effort on the part of modern architects to produce something new; and it seems that this effort is working as much in their minds as in the minds of painters and other artists, to produce, to create something new. No matter what direction architecture takes, there will come a time before long when a better approach will be found. But what is necessary for this is the development of spirituality. The architect should not think that it is the study of different architectures that will make him capable of producing something new; it is the heart, it is the spirit, which must reveal to him what he should create. The work of the architect is of the greatest importance; it comes through inspiration and its origin is spirit, not matter. A house is built with matter, but made with spirit. And as the spirit of the world evolves so architecture will evolve also.
In the future one can foresee two improvements. One will be the giving of more scope to the personality of the individual to express itself; and the other will be the evolution of an architecture which does not discard all that belongs to the past, but blends some of its best characteristics with the architectural conceptions of the present.
11. Poetry (1)
In poetry the rhythm of the poet's soul is expressed. There are moments in the life of every human being when the soul feels itself rhythmic, and at such moments children, who are beyond the conventionalities of life, begin to dance or to speak in words which rhyme, or to repeat phrases which resemble each other and harmonize together. It is a moment of the soul's awakening. One person's soul may awaken more often than another's, but in the life of everyone there are such times of awakening, and the soul which is gifted with the means of expressing thoughts and ideas, often shows its gift in poetry.
Among all the valuable things of this world the word is the most precious. For in the word one can find a light which gems and jewels do not possess; a word may contain so much life that it can heal the wounds of the heart. Therefore poetry in which the soul is expressed is as living as a human being. The greatest reward that God bestows on man is eloquence and poetry, and this is not an exaggeration; for it is the gift of the poet which culminates in time in the gift of prophecy. There is a Hindu idea which explains this very well, and it is that the vehicle of the goddess of learning is eloquence. Many live and few think, and among the few who think there are fewer still who can express themselves. Then their soul's impulse is repressed, for in the expression of the soul the divine purpose is fulfilled, and poetry is the fulfillment of the divine impulse to express something.
No doubt there is true poetry and there is false poetry, just as there is true music and false music. A person who knows many words and phrases may fit them together and arrange something mechanically, but this is not poetry. Whether it be poetry, art, or music, it must suggest life; and it can only suggest life if it comes from the deepest impulse of the soul; if it does not do that, then it is dead. There are verses of the great masters of various periods which have resisted the sweeping wind of destruction; they remain ageless. The endurance of their words was in the life that was put into them. The trees that live long have the deepest roots, and so have the living verses. We only read them in the same way in which we look at the trees, but if we could see where the roots of those verses are we would find them in the soul, in the spirit.
What is it that awakens the soul to this rhythm which brings about poetry? It is something that touches in the poet that predisposition which is called love. For with love there comes harmony, beauty, rhythm, and life. It seems that all that is good and beautiful and worth attaining is centered in that one spark that is hidden in the heart of man. When the heart speaks of its joy, of its sorrow, all of it is interesting and appealing. The heart does not tell a lie; it always tells the truth. By love it becomes sincere, and it is through the sincere heart that true love manifests. One may live in a community where there is always amusement, pastimes, merriment, and beauty; one may live that life for twenty years; but the moment one realizes the movement in the depths of one's heart, one feels that those whole twenty years were nothing. One moment of life with a living heart is worth more than a hundred years of life with a heart that is dead.
We see many people in this world who have every comfort and good fortune and everything they need, and yet they lead an empty life. Their life may be more unhappy than that of someone who is starving. He whose soul is starving is more to be pitied than he whose body is starving: for the one whose body is starving is still alive, but the one whose soul is starving is dead. Those who have shown the greatest inspiration and have given precious words of wisdom to the world were the farmers who were ploughing the soil of their heart. This is the reason why there are so few real poets in this world. For the path of the poet is contrary to the path of the worldly man. The real poet, although he exists on this earth, dreams of different worlds from whence he gets his ideas. The true poet is at the same time a seer, otherwise he could not bring forth the subtle ideas which touch the heart of his listeners. The true poet is a lover and admirer of beauty. If his soul were not impressed by beauty he could not bring it out in his poetry.
What stimulates the gift in the one who is born with the gift of poetry? Is it pleasure or is it pain? Not pleasure; pleasure freezes the gift. The sensitive poet's soul has to go through pain in his life. One may ask whether it would then be a wise thing to seek pain if one wants to be a good poet. But this would be just like thinking that crying was a virtue if one hurt oneself and cried a little. Who, with a living heart, can live in this world as it is and not suffer and not experience pain? Who, with any tendency to feel, to sympathize, to love, does not go through pain? Who, with any sincerity in his nature, could experience daily the insincerity, falsehood, and crudity of human nature, and yet avoid suffering? At every step he takes the poet will meet with suffering. A poet begins with the admiration of beauty, and his talent is the cause that he naturally tends to shed tears over the disappointments that he meets with in life. When he has passed that phase, then comes another phase and he begins to smile and even laugh at the world.
The further one advances in life, the more does life offer things that can give one a good reason for enjoying and amusing oneself. And the first thing that can make one smile is seeing how everybody is running after his own interests: how a man finds his way along devious routes, how he knocks another person down in order to go forward himself, how he pushes another from behind, and how he silences the next one. Is there anything that we cannot find in human nature? Biting, kicking, and fighting, it is all there. There is nothing of the animal nature that is not in the human being; man even excels the animal. All this, however, only makes one smile; the laughter comes afterwards, when one can see where it all ends. If one is capable of seeing all the various endings, in the end there will be laughter.
It is in this period of a poet's advancement that in some way pity, sentiment, and the sympathy that he already had turn into smiles and laughter. It is like something which is turned inside out. The pity and the shedding of tears which were at first outside, are now inside; and outside is the smile and the laughter. Thus both exist at the same time: laughter or a smile on the lips, and pity in the heart. When the poet is laughing his heart is crying at the same time; this is his nature.
The poet rises above tears when he has shed enough. This does not mean that he becomes critical, that he sneers at life, but that he sees the funny side of things and that the whole of life, which he once saw as a tragedy, now appears to him in the form of a comedy. This stage is a consolation for him from above, after his moments of great pain and suffering; but then there comes yet another stage where he rises higher still, where he sees the divine element working in all forms, in all names, where he begins to recognize his Beloved in all forms and names.
This experience in the life of a poet is like the joy in the life of a young lover. It inaugurates another period in his life. Whatever be his condition, rich or poor, in comfort or in need, he is never without his Beloved. His divine Beloved is always in his presence. When he arrives at this stage he pities the lover who has only a limited beloved to admire, to love; for now he has arrived at a stage where, whether alone or in a crowd, whether in the North or the South, the West or the East, on earth or in heaven, he is always in the presence of his Beloved.
And when he goes one step further still, then it becomes difficult for him to express his emotion, his impulse, in poetry. For then he himself becomes poetry. What he feels, what he thinks, what he says, what he does, all is poetry. At this stage he touches that ideal of unity which unites all things in one; but in order to reach this stage the soul must become so mature that it is able to enjoy it. For an infant soul would not be able to enjoy this particular consciousness of all-oneness. From this time on one will find in the poetry of that poet glimpses of prophetic expression. Then it is not only the beauty of the words and their meaning, but his words become illuminating and his verses become life-giving. There are souls in this world who are pious, who are wise, who are spiritual; but among them the one who is capable of expressing his realization of life, of truth, is not only a poet but a prophet.
12. Poetry (2)
The poet was born first and poetry came afterwards; poetry was born in the spirit of the poet. It is said in the East that as one can already see in the cradle what features the child will have later, so one can recognize a poet before he learns to speak. And poetry came before language, for it is the poetic spirit in man which made language. Thus the poet is not the son of language but its father; instead of only taking words he makes them. If it had not been for the poet, the language of all races would only have been shouting and howling. In all the different aspects of life we can recognize the signs of inspiration most fully in the poet; and there is no doubt great truth in the saying that the poet is a prophet, though it would be still better to say that the prophet is a poet.
Poetry is the best art there is, for besides everything else it is also drawing or painting with words. The mission of poetry is the same as the mission of the other forms of art. Poetry is a living picture, a picture which says more than a picture on canvas; and its mission is to inspire. Poetry comes to a poet through the suffering caused by disappointment; but any pain or suffering is a preparation, and just as in order to be able to play on a violin the violin must first be_tuned, so the heart must be tuned in order to express wisdom. The heart is tuned by suffering, and when the heart has suffered enough pain, then poetry comes. The natural birth of poetry takes place on the day when the doors of the heart are opened. Poetry comes from the heart quality; it is an expression of the love nature.
There is an example in the Sanskrit language of what has been said above, that poetry comes before learning, for in Sanskrit many everyday words rhyme. Mother and father rhyme: matr and parr. Also brother and friend rhyme: britra and rnitra. And if one goes through the Kosh, which is the Sanskrit dictionary, one will find that all the words which are related to one another in some way rhyme, and this shows that for the ancient people poetry was the everyday language; in other words, their everyday language was poetry.
There is a Sanskrit saying which is perhaps an exaggeration, but it is significant: that a man without any interest in music and poetry is like an animal without a tail. If we wish to compare music with poetry, we can only say that poetry is the surface and music is the depth of one and the same thing. As with mind and heart the surface is mind and the depth is the heart, so it is with poetry and music. The ancient poets were not only poets but also singers. They composed poetry and they sang, and the perfection of the soul could be seen in these two faculties: the faculty of poetry and at the same time its expression in the form of music. Those who separate music from poetry are the same as those who separate religion from life; they are interested in separating everything.
When we study the earliest Sanskrit poetry, we see that it was composed of words which had a fixed measure, each word containing three consonant root-letters to which different vowels were attached. This divided them into two kinds: words of one syllable and words of two syllables. For instance, to the consonant root mtr could be attached one vowel a, giving matr, mother; or two vowels i and a, giving rnitra, friend. The arrangement of the words thus composed formed a meter, and there were a great number of these meters in use.
The rhythms in which the ancient people composed their poems were taken from the rhythm of nature: the rhythm of the air, the rhythm of running water, the rhythm of a flying bird, the rhythm of waving branches--all these rhythms were taken from nature, and on them the poets based their poetry. They tried to keep near to nature, so that nature could teach them. And to each of these ancient rhythms or meters they gave a name which was related to something in nature. For instance there is a rhythm called Hansa, after the sound of a bird of that name. Poets used the rhythm of the Hansa's call in the composition of their poetry.
Thus the Sanskrit poets were very particular about the psychology of rhythm, words, letters, and syllables. They found that poetry had a mantric effect, which means that poetic inspiration creates a certain effect in the same way as mantrams, sacred words, and that thereby a person might unwittingly bring about bad luck or good luck for himself or for others, or be the cause of harm or success for someone.
There are superstitions that when a certain bird makes a sound it is a warning of coming death; this superstition exists in many different countries. It means that the sound this bird makes creates a destructive rhythm, and whenever that sound is heard it causes a destructive vibration. It is the same with poetry: the arrangement of words, syllables, and letters--all has an effect. When the wind blows from the North, from the South, from the East, or from the West, when it blows straight, slanting, zigzag, upward, or downward, it causes different conditions in the atmosphere. It may bring germs of a plague, it may culminate in a storm, it may create heat or cold, it may change the season, or it may cause destruction, good health, cheerfulness, or depression among people. And when by his breath, which can be likened to the wind that blows in the world, the voice of a singer pronounces a certain letter, then that breath has to take a certain direction. Either it goes upward or downward, to the right or to the left, straight or zigzag; and in accordance with this direction it has an influence upon a man's life.
One might think that if breath has such an influence on man's life, it is only for himself, whereas the influence of the wind is for the whole country, perhaps for the whole world; but man is more powerful than the world, though he may not realize it. The ancient people used to say that one man can save the world and the thought of one man can cause a ship to sink. If one wicked thought can cause a ship to sink, what a great power man has! The reason is that the wind is not so directly connected with the divine spirit as is the breath of man, and therefore man's breath is more powerful than the wind. And when we consider words and their meaning, modern psychology supports the idea that the meaning of every word acts upon our life and has an influence on the lives of other people. Poetry can thus be considered to be a psychological creation, something with psychological power, either for good or for ill.
What was most remarkable about the poets of the Sanskrit age was that all their life they practiced diction, the right pronunciation of every syllable and sound. Everything had to be in rhythm; besides it had to be of the right tone and it had to create the right vibrations. And the most learned men, not only among poets but among doctors and others, spent half an hour or longer every day in practicing and pronouncing different syllables and words, so that they could speak with greater fluency. Just as a singer today practices pronouncing every word clearly, so did the poets of that time, because they believed in the influence of sound: how it is produced, and what effect it has.
The Vedas which are supposed to have come from the divine source are all in verse, as are the Puranas and other sacred scriptures of ancient times. This shows that when the divine mind wished to express itself, it did not do so crudely; it always expressed itself in a fully poetic, rhythmic, and lyrical form. So often we meet people who proudly and boldly say, "I speak the truth. I do not care whether anybody likes it or not. I have the courage to tell the truth no matter if it hurts or kills." But they do not know what truth means; they do not know that truth comes in the form of poetry, of music, of delicacy and fineness.
After the Sanskrit age came the Prakrit age. Poetry became more human, not as philosophical and scientific as in the Sanskrit age. At this time the poet began to conceive in his mind different pictures of human nature and character; this was called Rasa Shastra, the science of human nature. In writing lyrics they distinguished between three aspects of love, and they classified the female and male natures in four different aspects.
It has always been the poet's natural inclination to set the feminine aspect of life and of nature on a high pedestal; it is this which inspires the poet to give a beautiful form to all that he creates. Thus poets of great repute in all ages have always been attracted by the moon; they have not written so many lyrics about the sun, as they had more appreciation for the feminine aspect of creation. For the same reason the crescent was the sign of the Prophet, for if a prophet were not responsive to God as the crescent moon is to the sun, illumination would not come to him. It is through his response to the voice of God that a prophet receives or conceives in his spirit the message which he then gives to humanity.
Kings at all times have been very much interested in knowledge and learning, and their association with poets softened their character and balanced their warlike tendencies, their roughness and crudeness. The poets helped the kings to look at life in a different way. It was the poetic inspiration of the emperor Shah Jehan which made the Taj Mahal. If it had not been for poetry he would not have become such a great lover.
The one who reads poetry, the one who enjoys poetry, and the one who writes poetry must know that poetry is something which does not belong to this earth, that it belongs to heaven; and in whatever form one shows one's appreciation and love for poetry, one really shows one's appreciation and love for the spirit of beauty.
13. Poetry (3)
Very little of the ancient Egyptian poetry has come down to us, and we can only trace some of it through what we know about the character of the Egyptians of those times, who expressed the mystical and musical aspects of the soul in a symbolical way. Hebrew poetry is little known too, except what one finds in the Old Testament. It was the Arabic lyrics which became best known to the Asiatic world as being the most inspired and beautiful. Also, the Arabs were a metaphysically and philosophically inclined people, and their poetry combined philosophy with lyricism and romance.
Poetry found its highest expression in Persia. The Persians had a natural gift for poetry and poetic inspiration, and their language yielded poetic form for the expression of their souls. When Firdausi wrote the history of Persia, he wrote it entirely in verse, showing thereby how the inspiration and language of the Persians blended with poetry. Sufis, especially from the time of Farid-ud-Din-Attar, have given God's message and have interpreted religion to the people of Persia in the form of poetry. Jelal-ud-Din Rumi's wonderful work, the Masnavi, and the poetry of his teacher Shams-e-Tabrez, all show that the spirit of poetry was incarnate in Persia at the time when Hafiz was born and when Sa'di wrote his Rose-Garden and his Garden of Fragrance, in which he taught ethics from beginning to end. In this period great poets were born, one after another, but after that they ceased.
What gave rise to this subtle, deep, and symbolical poetry was the fact that the Persian rulers suppressed all free thought and utterance; and therefore the great philosophers who felt a deep inspiration and also an urge to interpret the secret of life by the means of words, had to look for some way in which they could express themselves. In the end they found it, and that way was by expressing their philosophical ideas in the form of lyrics. This gave birth to a new form of art. It was like painting: all poetry became a picture of life; with different lights and shades and colors the poets composed pictures of the various aspects of human life. That is why Persian poetry has always been known as an individual, a unique, and a most wonderful and beautiful art. It is still considered to be so, though that inspiration seems to have vanished a long time ago.
The poetic wave from Persia came to India, and it was with this wave that the poetry of India changed its character. The Hindus, who have always been exclusive and remote, and followers of tradition, did not at first adopt the Persian form, so that in India two different aspects of poetry were developed. One aspect was the poetry written in one of the Prakrits, the vernaculars which had superseded Sanskrit both as a spoken language and in some forms of literature. It is said that the Prakrit languages were formed by Yogi powers and spiritual inspiration. The poets expressed wonderful ideas in Prakrit poetry, and they generally followed the same meters as in Sanskrit; they used many Sanskrit words, although the languages as a whole were Prakrits. Only in rhythm a new form was introduced, in which the vowels attached to different consonant letters were not heeded any more, and words and ideas were arranged so as to follow only the beat of the rhythm. In this way they were quite free to express themselves as long as they could beat the time in their minds, without being tied to the rigid system of syllables prevalent in Sanskrit poetry, as explained in the previous chapter.
There is an amusing story about two great Hindustani poets whose habit it was to speak in poetry. Poets who were able to do this were called Shigrakavi. One of them came to the village where the other poet was living; and one was very thin while the other was very stout. The fat one asked the thin one, in verse, if he was well. And the other answered, "The temple which is meant for God to live in does not need flesh; one must be thankful that there are bones!" And he added, "But you look quite well." Whereupon the stout poet answered, "When I had not yet found my beloved I also was thin, but the moment my beloved had come to me I became fat.'
The other aspect was the poetry written in Urdu-Hindustani which developed later. With the birth of this language poets found a great facility in expressing their souls, for it was composed of many languages, and this gave them a vast scope of expression. There were perhaps ten words for the sun and about twenty for the moon, and there was a great variety of expressions for any idea. In one way this made poetry easier, but in another way more difficult: easy for the gifted ones and difficult for those who wanted to make poetry mechanically, because the choice of words is not an easy thing. When there is a variety of objects in a shop it is difficult to make a choice, and to make a choice of words demands greater inspiration.
The poetry of Persia was enriched by the ideas of the Sufis, and Hindustani poetry was also developed by the same Sufi influence.
Many of the great Hindustani poets were Sufis, and there was no end to their success; the whole country was in ecstasy over their poems. It grew to such an extent that in conversation every literate man quoted verses from some well-known poet. This custom exists even today; an educated man when he is conversing even for a short time with another of his kind will always quote a few verses. In this way he uses the words of the poets to support his arguments.
When we look at the other side of the world, the Greeks of ancient times were as great in their poetry as they were in art. Every race that reaches a higher consciousness shows signs of its development in the form of art, music, and poetry. Greek poetry, therefore, will always remain an inspiration for poets and lovers of wisdom. Latin poetry too contained a great deal of mysticism. And in spite of the great gap of years, Dante showed the flame of the same inspiration which was so apparent in antiquity. It is most wonderful to see that in the same period on the one hand there should be such a wave of poetic inspiration in Persia, and on the other Dante should renew the art of poetry in Italy.
As we go further we find that from poetry came dramatic art, which became so highly developed in the time of Shakespeare. In his work we recognize the flame in spite of some passages of darkness. We can feel in the words of Shakespeare the ancient voice of the prophets. Whether people dwell in the East or in the West, in reality they come neither from the East nor from the West; nor do they go in the end either to the East or to the West. The source and goal are the same, and so is inspiration. And whoever reaches the truth and realizes the truth, whether in the East or in the West, realizes the same truth; the guidance comes from the same Spirit of Guidance. It seems as if there is weight in every word of Shakespeare, as if behind every word there is something else; and the more one thinks about it, the more one sees that his words are a kind of veil, hiding what is behind them. Added to this there is great dignity in Shakespeare's work.
When we come to modern poetry, we see that there have been symbologists and expressionists and other schools, but it seems that it will take a long time before the poets will reach the real symbols, before they will become real symbologists. Symbolism is born of an unconscious feeling which springs from intuition. When this happens, then the symbolism which the poet or artist has expressed in words or in some other form, inspires even the one who has expressed it.
A poet was once reading a very deep poem, a symbolical poem, written by a friend of his. And when he saw his friend he said, "What a wonderful poem! I was so impressed by its symbology. Will you explain to me what you meant by this line?" And the poet looked at him and said, "Really, I cannot tell myself what it means." When a poet writes mystical poetry and he himself is unconscious of his mysticism, then this mind must be a machine. Indeed, an obsessed poet can do this; but then it is some other poet who composes and he is only the pen. The poet writes what his soul dictates, and he writes according to the evolution of his soul.
No doubt in modern times much thought is given to rhythm, but on the other hand there are many poets who want to free themselves from rhythm. Both inclinations are right if they are used rightly. If rhythm binds one's thought and ideas and holds them back, it is. Just as well to be free from this bondage; but at the same time one should not forget that rhythm comes from the dancing of the soul. When the soul begins to dance, every word, every expression of a person becomes rhythmic. Rhythm, therefore, must not be forgotten, for rhythm inspires other souls also to dance.
Modern writers have a tendency to seek the expression of power rather than of beauty. When birds turn into animals, which happens according to certain theories, they become heavy and dense; and in the same way people, after having sought beauty, may turn into pursuers of power. Seeking beauty means going upward, but pursuing power means going downward; and when the birds come down the sparrows turn into barnyard £owls. It is owing to the materialism and commercialism of our time that poets are becoming more dense. Also, nowadays there are so many writers and so few poets. This itself shows that instead of going upward we are going downward.
One day I was introduced to a very well-known poet by a friend, immediately after I had given a lecture. And this poet asked me, "Is it really true that inspiration is required for poetry?" He, a well-known poet, did not believe in inspiration. And I met another poet who had made a great name for himself, but neither his expression nor his movements, words, or thoughts showed any sign of his being a poet. Why was this so? Because to become well known and enjoy momentary success, a man nowadays has to come down to the lowest mentality; that is what makes him a great man in the eyes of the people today. But it is a mistake. Why must one impress common people? It is better to impress the best people, the people with the purest mentality and highest spirit, and let the others appreciate what is shallow. In this way one can raise the ordinary people to a higher standard instead of stooping to reach them on their own level.
In New York a newspaper reporter came to see me and asked questions for half an hour, questions on philosophy and mysticism, and I was so interested in the questions he asked that I answered them extensively. Finally the journalist said, "How shall I put all these things that you have told me to the man in the street?" I said, "If you have come here in order to put these ideas to the man in the street, please do not use any of them; just put what you like." And so he did.
Poetry is the dance of the soul; and when from a poet's heart an inspiration wells up and he writes it down, even his prose will be poetry. But it is difficult for a writer of prose to write poetry, for it is not his line. Life has become so mechanical for us. We are thrown into this struggle of life from morning till evening; everywhere we turn we are caught up in a certain mechanism; and the depth of life, the high imagination, the lofty ideal, all seem to be missing. It is because of our everyday life. Under such conditions, what happens is that those who are really talented and worthy of praise are not noticed; only those who succeed in making an appeal to the most ordinary mentality are well known. No doubt this will not last and a change will come; but it can only come when the readers of poetry change. It seems that general education conceals the beauty of the art of poetry, because education is principally given for commercial purposes: to fit a man to protect his own interests in his worldly struggles. How can such a man appreciate poetry? And it is not only so in the West; in the East it is still worse. Poets have died of hunger for many, many years. Very few Rajas today have any appreciation of poetry, and the general public is not developed enough to appreciate it; therefore a good poet must die of hunger and only those who can make an appeal to the general public are successful.
But by their success the mentality of the whole race is being lowered. The day when education takes another form and is given with another ideal, the poetry of the world will change also. In order to write poetry or appreciate poetry, the poetic spirit must be awakened. It is not that the human race has lost inspiration, but that it is not awakened. The spirit today is awakened to business, but when it comes to higher ideals and principles, beautiful imagery, wonderful symbols, depth of thought and feeling, then it seems that the race is not making any progress. And this should be remembered: that the day when poetry improves and becomes more appreciated and more instructive and illuminating, that day we shall see and feel the promise for the human race to go forward once more.
1. Music (1)
In all ages the thoughtful have called music the celestial art. Artists have pictured the angels playing on harps; and this teaches us that the soul comes on earth with the love of music. In Arabia there is a story that when God commanded the soul to enter the body, the soul refused saying that this body seemed to it a prison. Then God asked the angels to sing and dance; and as the soul heard this music it was moved to ecstasy, and in that ecstasy it entered the physical body. It is an odd story, and yet it gives the key to the secret of music: that it is not after being born on earth that man learns to love music, but that the soul was already enthralled by music before it came to earth. And if one asks why then every soul does not love music, the answer is that there are many souls which are buried. They are alive, yet they are buried in the denseness of the earth; and therefore they cannot appreciate music. But in that case they are not able to appreciate anything else, for music is the first and the last thing to appeal to every soul.
The heaven of the Hindus, Indra Loka, is filled with singers. The male singers are called Gandharvas, and the female singers Upsaras. In Hindu symbology music seemed the best symbol to express paradise with.
Why does music appeal so much to man? The whole of manifestation has its origin in vibration, in sound; and this sound, which is called Nada in the Vedanta, was the first manifestation of the universe. Consequently the human body was made of tone and rhythm. The most important thing in the physical body is breath, and the breath is audible; it is most audible in the form of voice. This shows that the principal signs of life in the physical body are tone and rhythm, which together make music. Rhythm appeals to man because there is a rhythm going on in his body. The beating of the pulse and the movement of the heart both indicate this rhythm.
The rhythm of the mind has an effect upon this rhythm which is going on continually in the body, and in accordance with its influence it affects the physical body. The notes appeal to a person because of the breath; breath is sound and its vibrations reach every part of the body, keeping it alive. Therefore, in having an effect on the vibrations and on the atoms of the body, sound gives us a sensation.
This is only an explanation of the appeal of music to the physical body, but music reaches further than the physical body; it only depends on what kind of music it is. There is a tradition that the first language in the world consisted of music; after that a language of words came into being. Even now among primitive races there is a language of sounds; also, the more musical languages of the world are more expressive, whereas the languages which have less music in them are less so. It is not only words that convey a meaning; very often the tone of the voice conveys it much better, and sometimes the same word can have two or more meanings depending on the tone in which it is spoken. It is said that Shiva, or Mahadeva, was the first inventor of a musical instrument. When he was wandering about in the forest, engrossed in his spiritual attainment, he wanted to have some source of amusement, a change in his meditative life; and so ne took a piece of bamboo and two gourds, which he attached to the bamboo; and the strings he made out of animal guts. When, ne had fixed these on the instrument he had invented the vina; mat is why the Hindus call the vina a sacred instrument, and for many years they did not allow any strings except gut-strings to used. Afterwards this instrument was improved and made more refined, and now steel strings are mostly used; but the reason why gut-string is appealing to the human soul, is that it comes from a living body", and even after being separated from the body it still cried out, "I am alive!" Thus the violin gives out a more living sound than the piano. The piano may drown the violin, but the life that comes from the gut-string manifests as a voice.
There is a Chinese legend which says that the first music was played on little pieces of reed. The great musician of ancient times who introduced music in China, made holes in a piece of reed at a certain distance from each other, the distance between two fingers; and so the flute off reed came into being. From this came the scale of five notes: one note was the original note produced by the reed, and the four other notes were made by placing the fingers on the holes. Afterwards many other scales were developed.
Hindu philosophy distinguishes four different cycles of humanity, of the human race: Krita Yug, the Golden Age; Treta Yug, the Silver Age; Dvapar Yug, the Copper Age; and Kali Yug, the Iron Age. This cycle in which we are living now is the Iron Age. In the Golden Age there was the music of the soul, a music that appealed to the soul itself and that raised it to cosmic consciousness, the music of the angels, the music which was healing and soothing. And the music of the Silver Age was the music of the heart, the music which appealed to the depths of the heart, creating sympathy and love of nature, inspiring man and helping the heart quality to develop. The music of the Copper Age appealed to the mind, to the intellect, so that one could understand the intricacies of musical science, the difference between the many scales, the quality of the rhythm. Finally the music that belongs to the Iron Age has an influence on the physical body; it helps the soldiers to march and moves people to dance.
A story told in India illustrates this idea. At the court of the last emperor, Mohammed Shah, a singer came who had invented a new way of composing. And when this man sang his new compositions, he won the admiration and praise of everyone at the court. The singers and musicians were simply amazed to think that there could be a new development in music. But one of the old musicians who was present said, "If your Majesty will pardon me I would like to say a word. There is no doubt that this is most beautiful music, and it has won the admiration of all those present, and also my own. But I must tell you that from this day the music of the country, instead of going upward will go downward, because the music which was handed down to us has weight, it has substance, but now it seems that this has been lost and that the music has become lighter. Therefore from now on it will go downward." And so it happened; step by step after that the music was brought down.
A well-known writer said, "There are four intoxications: the intoxication of physical strength, the intoxication of wealth, the intoxication of power; but when it comes to comparing these three with the fourth, the intoxication of music, they are all as nothing."
One day the Emperor Akbar said to his chief singer, Tansen, "You are such a great singer and there is such wonderful magic in your voice, I wonder how great your teacher must have been." "Please," Tansen said, "never compare me to my teacher, there is no comparison." Akbar said, "Is your teacher then so great? Is he still alive?" Tansen said, "Yes, he is living dead." "Where can one find him?" asked the emperor. "I should like to hear him." Tansen said, "I will try, but I am afraid that his spirit might revolt if he saw that he had to sing before the emperor." Then Akbar said, "I shall come disguised as your servant." Tansen said, "In that case, it might be possible.'
Akbar went with Tansen, and after travelling a long way they found this teacher in the mountains, in solitude. Although Akbar was dressed as a servant the sage recognized him; still, the emperor's humble attitude appealed to him. And then he sang, and both Akbar and Tansen became spellbound; the sphere of the earth was lost from their consciousness.
When they came to their senses they saw that the sage was not there any more. "Where is he?" asked Akbar. Tansen said, "He has left this place for ever, fearing that we might come again and trouble him." Akbar could not say one word in praise of the music he had heard.
After their return to the palace, one day the emperor said, "Tansen, I feel such a longing to hear him again." Tansen said, "We can never find him again now that he has left that place." "But," said Akbar, "I feel so restless, I long so much to hear that voice again. Do you not know that raga which he sang?" Tansen said that he did know the raga and began to sing it. But when he had finished the emperor said, "It is not the same. Why is it?" And Tansen felt hurt and said, "It is because I sing before you, but my teacher sings before God!'
This incident awakened in Tansen's heart such a feeling of independence that he saluted the emperor and bade him goodbye. He saw that the source of his imperfection was the relationship he had with the court; and he could no longer bear it. And so he left, and the rest of his life he wandered through the country and led a meditative life.
The stories told about singers who could charm the birds and the animals, and about the miracles that were performed through the power of their music, are not only stories. Music can do even more than that; tone and rhythm are the source of the whole of manifestation.
15. Music (2)
The ancient Greek music seems to have been largely the same as the music of the East. The Greeks had certain scales like the ragas in India, which also resembled the Persian scales. In this way there was a similarity in the music of the human race; but there came a division between the music of the East and of the West when the Western music, especially the German, progressed in another direction. In the traditions and the history of the world, as far as one can trace, one finds that melody was considered the principal thing in the East as well as in the West; and the composers, according to their stage of evolution, enriched this melody as much as they could. At first the melodies were chiefly folksongs, but sometimes also more elaborate compositions, and as such they were the expression of the soul. They were not compositions in the sense of modern, more technical, compositions; they were in reality imaginations. An artist made a melody, and that melody became known after he had sung or played it; and then it was taken up by others. In this way one melody was sung by perhaps ten different musicians in various ways, each retaining his liberty in singing that melody. No doubt it was difficult even to recognize the same melody after four or five persons had sung or played it, yet each of these had his freedom of expression, right or wrong.
Music in the East was based on ragas, which means a certain arrangement of notes, a theme which was recognized and distinguished as a certain raga. These ragas were composed by four different classes of people: by those who studied and practiced folk-songs, and out of these folk-songs arranged certain themes or ragas; by mathematicians who mathematically worked out many hundreds of ragas; by poets and dramatists who composed ragas and their wives, raginis, as well as sons, daughters, and daughters and sons-in-law, creating in this way families of ragas in their imagination; and finally by musicians who out of the three above mentioned kinds of ragas composed new ones with their musical gift. On these ragas the music of India was based.
The credit for every song a musician sang and for every theme he played went to him, because while the theme might consist of only four or eight bars, he improvised extensively on it and made it more interesting. Therefore a performer in India had at the same time to be a composer, although in these improvisations due consideration was given to the original theme and rhythm of the raga, so that the audience might be able to recognize it. Even today, if a musician sings a raga which is not exactly as it ought to be, there may be someone among the audience who while not knowing precisely what is wrong will yet feel immediately that it does not sound right; just as in Italy when an opera singer makes one little mistake, someone from the audience will immediately show his disapproval. This is because the music of the opera has become engraved upon the spirit of the lovers of opera, and as soon as it seems slightly different from what they are accustomed to hear they know there is something wrong.
But what is most remarkable is that the mystics played such an important part in the development of Indian music. They used it for their meditation, as it was invented and taught by Mahadeva. Music is the most wonderful way to spiritual realization; there is no quicker and no surer way of attaining spiritual perfection than through music. The great Indian mystics such as Narada and Tumbara were singers; Krishna played the flute; and thus music in its tradition and practice has always been connected with mysticism. Musicians have always held to the principle that modern scientists have rediscovered: that the ear is incapable of fully enjoying two sounds played or sung together, and that is why they enriched the melody to such an extent for the purpose of their meditation.
When Persian music, with its artistry and beauty, was brought to India, it was wedded to Indian music; and there resulted a most wonderful art. The desire of the people of all classes and ages has always been and still is, that music, no matter whether it is technical or non-technical, theoretical or non-theoretical, should touch the soul deeply. If it does not do so, the technical, theoretical, and scientific side of it does not appeal to them. Therefore it has often been very difficult even for the great masters of music who had developed the technique and science of music, and who were masters of rhythm and tone, to please the audience; because the audience, from the king to the man in the street, everyone, wants only one thing, and that is a great appeal to the soul from the voice, from the word, from melody. Everything expressed in music should appeal to the soul; and this is true even to the extent that when a beggar in the street does not sing a song that appeals to the passers-by, he will not get as many pennies as another who more appealing.
No doubt the music of India has changed much during the last century. That which the Indians call classical music, or music with weight and substance, is not patronized any more, because of the ignorance of most of the princes and potentates of the country, and therefore the best music is no longer understood. Then people have taken to smoking and talking while listening to music, and music was not made for that. It seems that the spirit of the great musicians is dead; for a great vina player, who considered his instrument sacred and who worshipped it before taking it in his hand, practicing and playing it for perhaps ten hours a day, regarded music as his religion. But if he had to play before people who are moving about, smoking, talking with other people as at a social gathering, then all his music would go to the winds. It was the sacredness with which the people of ancient times invested music that kept it on a higher level.
When Tansen, the great singer, left the court, hurt by a remark of the Emperor Akbar, as was related in the previous chapter, he went to Rewa, a state in central India; and when the Maharaja of Rewa heard that Tansen was coming he was perplexed, wondering in what way he should honor him. A chair was sent for Tansen, to bring him to the palace, and when he arrived Tansen expected the Maharaja at least to receive him at the door. So as soon as he got out of the chair he said, "Where is the Maharaja?" and the man whom he asked replied, "Here is the Maharaja!" pointing to the one who had been carrying the chair all through the city. Tansen was most touched, and he said, "You could not have given me a greater reward." From that day Tansen saluted him with his right hand, saying, "This hand will never salute anyone else all my life." And so it was. Tansen would not even salute the emperor with his right hand. Such was the appreciation, the acknowledgment of talent in ancient India.
Now a new music has come to India which is called theatrical music. It is neither Eastern nor Western; it is a very peculiar music. The themes of march and gallop and polka, and airs which no one wants to hear any more in the Western world, are imitated, and an Indian twist is given to them. Thus they are spoilt for the ears of the Western listener and also for good Eastern ears. Since the masses have not been educated in the best music and for them there is only one source of entertainment, the theater, they are becoming as fond of this music as they are of jazz in America.
Pope Gregory, after whom the Gregorian scales are named, coordinated those beautiful melodies which had come from ancient Greece via Byzantium to form the religious music of the Church. This is all that remains as a relic of the music of those times, though one finds traces of this Gregorian music in the compositions of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries-for instance in Handel's Messiah; later composers, however, created a type of music which was quite different. No doubt in this way they laid the foundation for Western music and helped it to evolve, but evolve in what way? Mechanically. They were able to make use of large bands, either brass bands or string bands, and also of an orchestra in which hundreds of instruments could be played at the same time. This naturally made a great impression, and it gave the world of music much opportunity and scope for the development and evolution of music. Nevertheless, there was one thing which was lost and which is being lost more and more every day: the appeal to the soul, which is the main purpose of music.
Debussy was looking all his life for something new to introduce into modern music; and Scriabin once told me personally, "Something is missing in our music, it has become so mechanical. The whole process of composition nowadays is mechanical; how can we introduce a spirit into it?" And I have often thought that if Scriabin, with his free character and beautiful personality, had lived longer, he could have introduced a new strain of music into the modern world.
Will someone else try to do what Scriabin wanted? When there is a need, if there is a real desire for its fulfillment, it must come. It only seems that we do not need it enough; that is the difficulty. We become so easily contented with what we have. If the world feels a greater need for a better kind of music, then it will come; but if people mostly enjoy jazz, and if that is sufficient for them, then naturally it will only come slowly, because so few want anything better.
The music of the future will be different from the music of the past in this way: the ancient music developed only in one direction, and that was that every instrument was played alone and every song was sung alone; there was no other instrument or voice. And the modern development is that there is a variety of voices and there are many instruments playing together; the development of music in this direction has its origin in what is recognized as classical music. It certainly has its value, but on the other hand something has also been lost. In order to make music perfect, its ancient aspect should be developed more.
There is music which makes one feel like jumping and dancing; there is music which makes one feel like laughing and smiling; and then there is music which makes one feel like shedding tears. If one were to ask a thoughtful person which he preferred, no doubt he would say, "The last, the music which brings tears." Why does the soul want sad music? Because that is the only time when the soul is touched. The other music, the music which reaches no further than the surface of one's being, remains only on the surface. It is the music that reaches to the depths of one's being which touches the soul. The deeper the music reaches, the more contented is the soul. No doubt a person who is very cheerful and has had dinner and a glass of wine could be quite happy with some dance music. But then he need not have serious music, for him jazz will be quite sufficient.
The modern revival of folk-music is an effort in the right direction. But it should be carried out without spoiling the folk music; for the tendency of most composers is to take this music and then put too much of their own touch into it. If, however, they can preserve the folk-music without spoiling it, it will be something worth while. Composers sometimes take folk-music and attach modern harmony to it, and this spoils it too, for generally folk-music is the expression of the soul of that particular time when there was no harmonization such as there is now. And the modern method of harmonization, when it is applied to folk music, takes away its original atmosphere.
We can observe two principal tendencies in modern music. One is the tendency to make the music of our time more natural, and in that way to improve it. And this can surely be developed more and more, as there will be a greater appreciation of solo music, for instance of the "cello or the violin. Musicians will again go back to the ancient idea of one instrument playing or one voice singing at a time. And when they again come to the full appreciation of this idea, they will reach the spiritual stage of musical perfection. People today like music which has more than one voice because they do not listen enough to solo music. But the more they hear it and the closer they come to it, the more they will forget the other kind. There are big symphony concerts given in the concert-halls of London, New York, Paris, and all the large cities, but if one notices carefully what the audience likes best, it will be a solo on the "cello, on the flute, or on the violin.
People are accustomed to hear music of many sounds, and after the solo concert is over they will enjoy the other kind of music; but in the depths of their being they will surely still prefer the solo music, for the human soul is the same now as in ancient times, and the same in the East as in the West. The ringing of one bell has a greater appeal than the ringing of many bells. One sound always goes deeper than many sounds. The reason why two sounds are in conflict with each other is that however much they are tuned to one another, yet they are two, and that in itself is a conflict.
But then there is another tendency which is working hand in hand with this one, and which is dragging music downward. And that tendency is that the composers are not contented with the chords that the great masters such as Mozart or Beethoven or Wagner have used in their music, but they are inventing new chords, chords which tend to confuse thousands of listeners. And what will be the outcome of this? It will have an unconscious effect upon the nervous system of humanity; it will make people more and more nervous. And as we often see that those who attend good concerts only go there out of vanity, they will accept any kind of music. But, as Wagner has said, noise is not necessarily music. It is not the newness of the music which will give satisfaction in the end; it will not do any good to the souls who have gone to the concert-hall only to satisfy their vanity. Music should be healing, music should uplift the soul, music should inspire; then there is no better way of getting closer to God, of rising higher towards the spirit, of attaining spiritual perfection, than music, if only it is rightly understood.
16. Drama
When one thinks deeply about the origin of drama one finds that drama belongs to the origin of life itself; that not only has man invented dramatic art, but that God has produced a play in the form of this manifestation. Very often inquiring souls raise the question why, if God is kind and loving and merciful, must there be these tragedies in life, suffering, disappointments, and failures. And the best answer that could be given to this question is that He has arranged this play. Would we say that it is unkind to give someone the part of the victim in a play, or that it is wrong of the producer to give an actor the part of a murderer? But when we look at it as a play, we see that all these different parts are given in order to produce one effect, in order to get to the essence. For every character in the play, from beginning to end, the king and the slave, the murderer and his victim, the lover and the one who hates, the cruel one and the one who is kind-hearted, the one who is just and the other who is unjust--they are all helping to produce one ultimate effect, and it is for this effect that the whole play has been arranged.
It is the same with God and the creation. The whole of manifestation is arranged, with all its desirable and undesirable aspects, with its right and wrong, and with all the kindness and cruelty that we see on the surface of this earth; all this produces in the end one single effect for which the whole play was made. One might say that if this is only a play then it is nothing, but if this is nothing then there is nothing else that we can call anything. If anything exists at all, it is this manifestation; one may call it everything or nothing, as one wishes.
When we trace the origin of dramatic plays back to the Sanskrit age, we find that religious ceremonies and rituals first took place in order to give human beings the impression which they needed for their development: to console them, to bless them, to reveal the truth gradually to them; for everything that was necessary for their development was given to them in the form of ceremonies or rituals. Then the same tendency took another form, and the result was the putting on the stage of the palace, the court, the king, and the courtiers; and later the officers and soldiers of the army were added. It was all a production, but a production for a purpose, for in life drama is necessary; life is a drama and it needs drama.
When we consider our own individual life, is it not a drama? In the dream a play is performed; for hours on end a certain life is experienced, but when the eyes are opened the curtain has fallen and the play is over. That which was real at that moment becomes a dream as soon as the eyes are open and the sun has risen.
The ancient drama was performed by reciting, singing, playing music, and acting. One man told a tale and acted it at the same time, helped by those around him; and in this way it developed into a form of story-telling. Man's artistic sense embellished it more every day, to make it as pleasing as possible to the eyes and ears. The great Hindu scriptures of Valmiki became most popular, because they presented philosophy and religion in the form of tragedy; and that tragedy was then performed by those who were capable of giving full expression to it. The dramas of Kalidasa, the great Indian playwright of the Sanskrit age, have always appealed to the Hindus as dramas of most wonderful character and ideal. As later in the dramas of Shakespeare, we find in them great substance and the full expression of character.
In opera much of the ideas and of the plot is sacrificed in order to make continual singing possible. The result is somewhat unnatural. On the stage when a man is happy he sings; and when a man is sad he also sings; whether a man is "anxious or at peace, from beginning to end he is singing. No doubt it is most interesting to hear singing all the time, but it is also one-sided, it does not give one a full idea of the play; it only gives one an occasion to hear singing.
It seems that the more material humanity has become, the more superficial is the drama of today. And in comedy every attempt is made to amuse the man in the street. Imagine a play during which the audience has to laugh from the beginning to the end! What can a play like that teach mankind? There is a roar of laughter all through the play, and hundreds and thousands of people come to see it and to become hysterical in the end. That was not the idea of the theater. The idea of the theater was to awaken man from his intoxication of life, and to make him realize life's deeper aspects, showing him an aspect which was hidden from his eyes, so that his eyes might be opened and he might see it; that was the object of drama and the theater.
There is a feeling, called Vairagya in Sanskrit, which is produced by throwing a full light upon life, and this Vairagya" was the central theme of the ancient playwrights. Among the Greeks there was a custom that in the midst of a feast a mummy was brought into the assembly; the idea was that when people were enjoying life and drinking and playing, intoxicated with life, one brought before them something to distract their mind from the pleasure and joy of the surface of life, and to draw their attention to its beginning and end, and to its reality. That was the real purpose of drama: that men who are busy in their factories and offices and industries, or with their studies, might have an opportunity to look at life from another point of view; that they might be able to see more clearly those sides of life which are veiled from their eyes because of their everyday occupations.
Nowadays there is not only the theater, but in addition there are moving pictures; and they are only for distraction and to pass the time. And in that distraction the degenerate side of life is shown, so that very often children and young people get wrong impressions. Hundreds and thousands of people go to see these plays, but what do they gain? In fact it is a great loss. Life was already so material, and the cinema makes it even more so.
At the same time we see that the theaters and opera-houses and music-halls are built more splendidly than ever before in the whole history of humanity. The stage is so cleverly illuminated and the scenery is made to appear so real, that one can say that never in the world has there been such an advance in this field as today. It is wonderful to observe how anxious are the artists to do their best on the stage, and also the talent of acting is far developed. If only in the artistic world, and especially in the world of actors, a spiritual ideal could be introduced, if their interest could be drawn to the real side of life, they could render a very great service to mankind at this day when the stage is a central object of interest to humanity.
One cannot say what the future will be. But as today one sees such numbers of people quite satisfied with what they get at the theater, and as very little effort, or none at all, seems to be made to deepen the dramatic ideal, it must obviously take some time to introduce a spiritual ideal. But with the development of art, literature, music, and poetry, drama will also develop in its own time; and the development of drama will become a most important factor in the evolution of humanity.
The effort that a playwright makes today is to show the present condition of life to the world. But the present condition of life is already known; it need not be shown again. People see it from morning till evening; the street, the care, the station, the train, all these things they see and none of these are new to them. Giving the picture of life as everyone sees it all day long is not helpful. One should bring before the people the sides of life which are hidden from the generality and which can help them in their evolution; then no doubt drama would take an important place in education.
When one speaks to people on this subject, they say, "People do not like to have anything philosophical in a play, because if they want to learn philosophy they will read books. They do not want anything religious; if they want religion they will go to church." Then what do they want? Pastime. But those who never open a book of philosophy and yet for whom philosophy would be very helpful in their lives, can be benefited by a little touch of philosophy in the play. At the same time, whether it is the church or the stage, whenever wisdom is given it helps humanity. It does not matter in which way it is given.
Plays today are made as if in a mold, and if they are not made according to this mold, then it is not considered to be good play-writing. But an ideal is something which cannot be confined to a mold, which cannot be limited to a certain design or a certain form. The higher the ideal is the larger the scope it requires, and it cannot be accommodated in a small design or form. Not only drama, but also music and poetry often suffer because of a fixed mold that is forced upon the composer or the poet. The production of art has become material. Whether it is poetry, music, or drama, it can only be true art, really inspired art, when it is made just as it comes, and when it is also completed in that
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