On Art
THEME/S
" Art is discovery and revelation of beauty.
The aim of Art is to embody beauty and give delight."
Sri Aurobindo: Future Poetry.
Sri Aurobindo, the great Yogi, besides being a great artist, is a great aesthete. He unhesitatingly gave a higher place to Beauty and Delight than even to Knowledge. He wrote: " The day when we get back to the ancient worship of Delight and Beauty will be our day of Salvation ". He knew that the present age was rather far from the worship of beauty and delight. Art today is isolated from life. The modern European culture that dominates the world is " economic and utilitarian. " The modern mind is complex and divided, it is governed by " practical reason." Sri Aurobindo warns : " Without it (the worship of beauty and delight) there could be no assured nobility and sweetness in Art; no satisfied dignity and fullness of life nor harmonious perfection of the spirit." And he adds "Beauty and Delight are also the very soul and origin of art and poetry." ( Future Poetry)
The question may arise : what has spirituality to do with Art—with beauty and delight ? From the Indian point of view, spirituality is akin to Art. In fact, in ancient times, religion, philosophy and art were collateral activities and poetry, dance and music were allied to sculpture and painting. Religion affirms a Supracosmic Reality, a Creator of the Universe, and lays down rules to govern man's relation with Him and with his fellow beings. It attempts to bring a higher Truth into man's individual and collective life.
Art, too tried to reach out to the same Reality through aesthetic sensibility, creative urge and a sense of beauty. It
*Lecture delivered at the Benares Hindu University December 1961.
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created forms which attempted to bring the invisible reality into the realm of the senses. It makes the invisible visible; renders the Infinite in terms of the finite.
Art enriches human life; its alchemy converts the elements of gross matter into those of the Imponderable, turns stone or wood, metal or mere paper into something not only beautiful but Divine. Buddha's stone image embodies a state of consciousness, the ineffable peace of Nirvana.
The difference in the outlook of ancient and modern times is easily seen in the outlook towards Nature. Krishna Deva Raya ruled the country around Ellora. During his regime the construction of a temple to be carved from the rock was planned. It took 200 years to execute the plan. The Kailasa at Ellora is grand by any standard. Today the popular governments plan for industrial development. The difference between the dominating spirit of the two ages is clear. In the past, Art was a part of life; today man wants to make science and industry a part of life. There is nothing wrong in it, so long as it is only one part and not the all-absorbing and dominating part. The capacity to utilise the resources of Nature should not promote in man the merely utilitarian view of life. To see this world as Nature's inexhaustible treasure house and to feel that the highest business of man is to rob as much of it as he can during the short span of his life is a very poor view of the world and of man. A balanced view is needed.
*
The story of Beauty and the Beast is well-known. In all cultures there are such symbolic stories. There is a very large element of the beast in human nature. Beauty has the power to change and elevate the beast in man. Life is full of needs, necessities, impulsions and even sub-conscious irresistible movements. Man has to eat, breathe and work for his bread, life is full of compulsions. Beauty frees man from these compul-
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sions. A need touches man where he feels a want and when the want is satisfied the object that fulfils the want becomes burdensome. But "A thing of beauty is a joy forever," it is not meant to satisfy any outer need,—it does not touch us at a particular point, it embraces the whole of our being. After that man is able to look at the world free from the pressure of necessity, free from the veil of self-regarding ego and desires. Thus art-experience liberates the consciousness and brings into view a new dimension of perception in which harmony seems the established law.
The claim of science is {or rather was) that the knowledge of the external world which it obtains by using the senses and by experiments is the only valid knowledge: it is real, in opposition to the perception of the world by poetry, art, etc. which it characterised as "unreal," "imaginative,""impractical." In fact, the knowledge of the world which science gives is only one side of Reality of which the experience of poetry and art is another, and even more important aspect. Beauty, in fact, is nearer to that ultimate supraintellectual Reality, for its knowledge is directly attained by an act of identity and is not indirect like that of science.
Sir Arthur Eddington in his Gifford lectures has discussed this question of validity of knowledge. He says that the claim of physical science that the rainbow exists to give the knowledge of the difference in the wave-lengths of light to man is not valid. When the poet says: "My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky", he expresses another aspect of the knowledge of the rainbow. The ripples in the lake do not merely indicate the force of surface-tension and the pressure of the wind, but the poet's image about them is not merely something unreal and therefore untrue.
Tagore in his book Sadhana says that a thing of beauty generally has two sides; one, outer or merely objective and
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another, inner or subjective. He takes the rose for an illustration, fortunately, there is unanimity about its beauty. Objectively, the beautiful rose is a hard-working labourer in Nature's workshop, it has no time to be a dandy. In order to live, the plant must draw the necessary elements from the soil, air and sunlight. It should absorb water in necessary quantity at the proper time. But the same rose, when it enters man's heart becomes a symbol of freedom, leisure and beauty. It seems to man a mystery of colour, form and fragrance. The soil which man looks upon as ugly and dirty hides within itself such a treasure of beauty. The very earth seems to find her joyful liberation in the form of perfume that pervades the air. But in the work-a-day world, busy with humdrum life, man hardly finds time to perceive the beauty of the rose. In the homes of the well-to-do the vases are decorated with flowers, but it is a mere convention not a communion with beauty. Such a communion is likely, perhaps, in the silence of early morning while walking round the garden when you see the miracle of the .opening rose-bud. Every thing around is calm, and in that solitude the beauty of the rose reveals itself to you. You have then the overwhelming shock of delight. You see, then what an infinite treasure of beauty is being "squandered" in the universe and how much of it runs to mere waste because of man's insensibility.
Sri Aurobindo says: "Art is discovery and revelation of beauty," and adds: "The aim of art is to embody beauty and give delight." Explaining the nature of the 'delight', he says: "Delight or Ananda is not the pleasure of a mood or sentiment or a fine aesthetic indulgence of the sense in the attraction of form." (Future Poetry)
Today there is an insistence on the acceptance of life and Art is expected to be directed to life. In fact, all human activities are for life. Only the question is: What is life ? Art also exists for life. Sri Aurobindo says: "Art is the rhythmic voice
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of Life—but a voice of inner life." (Future Poetry) Life is not what it appears. In fact, the outer aspect of life is a mask. To reach out to and express that which is behind the mask is the business of art.
We have to bear in mind that Art is not only expression, it can be creative, also.
Experience of Beauty
In ancient times religion encouraged the experience of beauty as an aspect of the Divine. There were puritanical religions like Protestant Christianity and some philosophical schools that condemned beauty, or encouraged renunciation as indispensable to spirituality.
But in India the Upanishad speaks of the Supreme as "Rasovai Sah", "He is of the nature of the sap of Delight". Sri Aurobindo explains the word "Rasa": "Rasa is concentrated taste, a spiritual essence of emotion, an essential aesthesis, the soul's pleasure in pure and perfect source of feeling" (Future Poetry).
Later in mediaeval times the Vaishnavite religion of the North and Shaivism of the South India have spoken of beauty not only as one, but the highest, aspect of the Supreme: The Divine to them is "bhuvan sundara", the All Beautiful. He is "nikhil rasāmrta sindhu", "the ocean of the entire ambrosia of delight"; He is "akhila saundarya nidhi" — "the treasure of all beauty". Tagore says: "vairāgya sādhane mukti, se āmār noy."1—"the liberation that is attained by renunciation is not for me"; I feel the embrace of freedom in thousandfold bonds of delight". He wants to keep the doors of the senses open and feel through them the universal delight.
So did Kabir sing a few centuries ago: "santo sahaja samādhi bhalī"; "O holymen! spontaneous samadhi is the best". He says further, "Since I got the vision of the Lord,
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my consciousness does not turn inwards. No longer do I close my eyes or ears, nor do I mortify my body; with eyes open and a smile on my lips, I behold the beautiful form of the Lord everywhere. In the centre of all forms stands the Formless, yet ineffable is the beauty of the "Form".1
To realise the universal beauty and also to see the Supreme as the All-Beautiful through the normal activities of the senses may be regarded as the highest experience of Beauty.
One has also to bear in mind the fact that all men always keep the doors of their senses open, and yet all do not have the vision of the divine beauty. There is needed a preparation, a sadhana, to perceive it.
Leaving aside the highest aspect of the experience of beauty one or two instances may be related here to help one to understand the nature of the experience of beauty.
The first is an experience of Tagore during his childhood. A private school was run for the children of the Tagore-family. Among the subjects taught anatomy was also included. One day, the teacher of anatomy brought the bone of a human hand isolated from the human skeleton for the lesson. Tagore felt terribly shocked at the sight of the bone unrelated to human body : he could not see it except as an organic part. Isolated from its natural place and function it appeared meaningless and was ugly.
Another experience of Tagore may be cited in his own words : .'One day I was out in a boat on the Ganges. It was a beautiful evening in autumn. The sun had just set; the silence of the sky was full to the brim with ineffable peace and beauty.
1 ānkha na mundu, kān na rundhu. kā yā kashta na dhāruh
Khule nayan me has has deskman
Sundar rupa nikārum
Sabahin murata bich amurata
murata ki ba/ihari
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The vast expanse of water was without a ripple, mirroring all the changing shades of the sunset glow. Miles and miles of a desolate sandbank lay like a huge amphibious reptile of some anitideluvian age, with its scales glistening in shining colours. As our boat was silently gliding by the precipitous river-bank, riddled with the nest-holes of a colony of birds, suddenly a big fish leapt upto the surface of the water and then disappeared, displaying on its body all the colours of the vanishing sky. It drew aside for a moment the many coloured screen behind which there was a silent world full of joy of life. It came up from the depths of its mysterious dwelling with a beautiful dancing motion and added its own music to the silent symphony of the dying day. I felt as if I had a friendly greeting from an alien world in its own language, and it touched my heart with a flash of gladness. Then suddenly the man at the helm exclaimed with a distinct note of regret "Ah, what a big fish!" (Sadhana). He saw the fish through the veil of his desire and so could not get the whole truth of it. (Sadhana). A beautiful river to a painter's view is not the same as it is to a thirsty man,
But what is the meaning of the experience of beauty? What does a man mean when he says: this thing is beautiful.
Words like 'beauty', 'art', 'poetry' are very difficult to define, though one feels what they mean and experiences their action in on self. Very often definitions fail to give the true idea of the thing defined.
Beauty is recognised, rather, by an instinct, a spontaneous intuition in man,—there is an inner eye that sees beauty. But all men do not perceive beauty in the same form or object. If the inner eye is not open, if the instinct is not active then beauty remains unperceived. That is what makes Wordsworth complain: "The word is too much with us." We are so engrossed in the outer and material aspect of our life, its needs, cares and preoccupations that we lose sight of the gift of beauty.
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Something about beauty may be known by finding out how it acts on men. Suppose one says : "beauty captivates me"— then he is feeling the attraction and perhaps the charm of it without the perception of true beauty. Lord Vishnu is said to have assumed the form of the fatal charmer, Mohini, to deceive the titans. When one is enchanted or enthralled by a form then something like a spell is cast upon him, it almost seems as if one is caught into a net like a helpless victim.
That is not the nature of the experience of pure beauty. When one feels: "beauty liberates me, beauty raises me to the Infinite", then he has come in contact with the real thing. True beauty frees the soul from all self-regarding reactions, desires and impulses; it gives another view of the self and the world, and may reveal an aspect of the Divine, may inspire one to unconditional self-giving, may enable one to perceive the play of infinite delight as beauty.
These various grades of the experience of beauty show that beauty is relative; it can be arranged in a hierarchy.
But what is the content of the experience of beauty? When a man says, "this thing is beautiful", he means: I feel this object rhythmic, it is well proportioned, its parts are harmoniously set, it is as it should be. Or perhaps that is not the correct way of putting it, for a machine well made might satisfy those conditions—and though one may find a machine beautiful, yet it seems so mechanical, too utilitarian, too dry. The experience may be put in this way: "My inner soul and my nature both are attracted by this object which has spontaneous harmony ". Generally in a thing that is felt as beautiful one wants to say that the inner truth which is trying to manifest itself in the object or form has succeeded in its objective; the truth in it is expressed there, without distortion or diminution, —there is here a perfect accord between the inner truth or reality and the outer form. Thus beauty is the quality of an object or
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a form, which gives to the subjective consciousness that perceives it the sense of harmony, of perfect proportion, of appropriateness, a feeling of attraction. It can be said that at some unforgettable moment or condition, the relation between the two-subject and object, becomes so special, so unique that it satisfies the thirst for beauty in the heart.
One may question: Is there thirst for beauty in man? The answer is : Yes; though ordinarily, such a need is not perceived yet unknown and unexpressed the need for beauty is always there in man. Man is an ignorant creature and lives in a world of disharmony, division and conflict, yet in his heart of hearts—there is a faith that in the centre of this vast, dynamic universe, self-existent harmony is at work, a harmony that so satisfies him that even a glimpse of it makes him feel as if the very purpose of creation were fulfilled, that the whole labour of the Cosmos was justified.
Beauty is the language of the all-pervading delight of existence calling man to itself. Experience of beauty may be said to be the direct proof of the unity of all being and of the presence of the all-pervading delight which spills itself constantly into two jets of beauty and delight. And this delight can manifest itself even in inconscient Matter to a soul encased in senses.
One can say that beauty is Nature's effort to awaken man to the universal harmony, or that beauty is a sign that Nature is not unconscious in its depth and that she waits to carry her message to man.
Sri Aurobindo defines beauty as " the intense impression, the concentrated form of delight." The all-pervading Delight manifests at each point something unique which endows it with a special quality of beauty. Beauty may be said to be the power of the Supreme which acts when He turns to create the universe. There is an infinite content of beauty in the Supreme. This Infinite content of beauty can find expression
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in a small fraction of time, in an apparently insignificant thing. Sri Aurobindo speaks about this in his poem, "In Horis Eternum". He says that the perception of this eternal beauty can occupy "a moment mere". There can be an instantaneous perception of beauty 'in a touch', 'in a smile'. Outwardly it may be something very insignificant but it is charged with burden of That which is behind all forms. The human soul through the senses catches not merely the vibration of the form but of That which is behind.
The experience of beauty can be independent of any outer equipment, ornamentation, or environment, the subjective state alone of the individual can make the form beautiful.
Sri Aurobindo clarifies the nature of the experience of beauty and its highest seeking:
" When it (the soul) can get the touch of this universal, absolute beauty, this soul of beauty, this sense of its revelation in any slightest or greatest thing, the beauty of a flower, a form, the beauty and power of a character, an action, an event, a human life, an idea, a stroke of the brush or the chisel or a scintillation of the mind, the colours of a sunset or the grandeur of the tempest, it is then that the sense of beauty in us is really, powerfully, entirely satisfied. It is in truth seeking, as in religion, for the Divine, the All-Beautiful in man, in nature, in life, in thought, in art; for God is Beauty and Delight hidden in the variation of his masks and forms. When fulfilled in our growing sense and knowledge of beauty and delight in beauty and our power for beauty, we are able to identify ourselves in soul with this Absolute and Divine in all the forms and activities of the world and shape an image of our inner and our outer life in the highest image we can perceive and embody of the All-Beautiful, then the aesthetic being in us who was born for this end, has fulfilled himself and risen to his divine consummation. To find highest beauty is to find God; to reveal, to embody, to create as we say, highest beauty is to bring out of our souls the Jiving image and power of God. ( Human Cycle, p. 178).
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DIFFERENT LEVELS OF PERCEPTION OF BEAUTY
Even though beauty is everywhere there is room for a hierarchy in it. Sri Aurobindo says: "All is from one point of view beautiful; but all is not reduced to a single level. All things can be seen as having divine beauty but some things have more divine beauty than others."
And this scale of beauty does not hold good only for one who apperciates beauty but it applies to the artist as well; "In the Artist's vision too there can be gradations, a hierarchy of values—Appelle's grapes deceived the birds that came to peck at them but there was more aesthetic content in Zeus of Phidias, a greater content of consciousness and therefore Ananda to express and fill in the essential principle of beauty, even though the essence of beauty may be realised perhaps with equal aesthetic perfection by either artist in either theme."
The creations of art do not all proceed from one plane of consciousness; different artists create from different levels,— from the physical and vital attraction, to pure devotion or aesthetic perception, from reaction to shocks of life, attachment to an ideal, play of creative imagination. This ladder of creative impulse might give us different levels of the experience of beauty.
We will take a few examples at random. Byron writes: "Who can view the ripened rose nor seek to wear it?" In this line we find the irresistible attraction which beauty exerts on the human heart. But it also expresses the most common reaction of the desire-soul, the Kamanamaya Purusha, to the experience of beauty. Byron here represents the ardent cry of the vital being in man for the possession of beauty. Coupled
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with the experience of beauty is the tragic vein of disappointment and a justification of the possessive impulse.
In Shelley's experience of beauty there is an ethereal and mystic strain. Shelley and Keats are like caged birds trying to escape from the imprisonment of human limitations beating ineffectively their wings against the bars. But their perception has great truth and power; they stress the need for reaching out to the transcendent beauty. Shelley writes:—
I can give not what m en call love;
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above.
And the Heavens reject not;
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow ?
Shelley's experience differs from that of Byron; it is more subtle, more delicate, suffused with elements of psychic beauty. It moves on a different plane. The poet admits that he cannot give to his beloved "what men call love",—there is an implied contempt for that love! but he offers instead a far greater thing, the worship which the human heart offers to the Divine and which the Supreme does not reject. There is a thirst in the human heart for perfection unattained. Not only is it present in the human heart but even in the insignificant moth there is an attraction for the light of the stars and even the dark night holds in her heart the immortal hope for the Dawn; from the world of sorrows the human being feels devotion for the Divine.
Here there is no distracted cry of the human vital being to possess beauty. There is instead an ardent aspiration to offer his devotion to the object of love which the poet feels akin to the Divine,
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Keats wrote those immortal lines :—
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth and all ye need to know."
Beauty is one with the Reality. But Keats found the world far from being beautiful. So, he burst forth into a magnificent and fiery aspiration :—
But cannot I create?
Cannot I form? Cannot I fashion forth
Another world, another universe
To overbear and crumble this to naught?
Where is another chaos? Where? (Hyperion)
In the white heat of his intense impulse the poet did not, perhaps, realise that one chaos was quite enough; and if any scheme of perfection is to be realised it is by a transformation of this world, by man's ascent to the attainment of Beauty which is Truth and by a descent of the Truth which would bring beauty into Life.
There is here the intense expression of human need for perfection, for beauty : the creative impulse in the poet sees the possibility of perfection in life on earth.
Wordsworth perceived the presence of a spirit behind the forms of Nature, he received intimations from the world of immortality. His experience of beauty is largely in the field of Nature; to him Nature is living; outside Nature—particularly in human life—he was very much disappointed. He did not feel beauty in life, in action or character as he felt in Nature. He wished man to identify himself with the presence that pervades Nature. He describes his experience in one poem thus—
"These beauteous forms
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind mans's eye;
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But oft in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet
Felt along the blood, felt along the heart".
The experience of beauty of Nature could influence not only his inner being but almost his nervous system and the body.
At the same time, it seemed to open the third eye of knowledge in his conciousness and illumine the world with its light and transform it, He says.—
"while with an eye made quiet by the power of
harmony and the deep power of joy
we see into the life of things" (Tintern Abbey)
This vision of "the life of things" endows the forms with universal beauty.
Tulsidas, the great Hindi poet, describes the love at first sight between Rama and Sita thus:
"Lochan maga Ramahi ura ani
Dine palaka kapata sayani
"Bringing Rama to her heart along the path of the sight, Sita closed the doors with her winking"
The aspect of beauty expressed here differs so much from the charm of mere external form. The poet does not describe here the beauty of either Rama or Sita, or the attraction they felt. The love that Sita felt for Rama seems so spontaneous, so much like recognition of the souls for each other. It seems as if Sita took Rama to her heart through the path of her sight and then closed, not merely her eyes but, the doors of her heart, so that there was no chance for anyone else to enter there. And the suggestion—the Dhwani—indicates that Rama could not go out of her heart even if he wanted to. There is no question of why there was love. The experience of beauty carries everything before it; there is no logical cause, no explanation. Beauty is
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beyond the net of logic and explanation. Here there is no question, as there is in case of Shelley, about the acceptance of the pure offering of love. Here is the self-poised serene joy of attainment, a feeling of fulfilment of the experience of beauty.
Beauty acts spontaneously and without any self-regarding motive. Bhavabhuti describes it in one of his dramas :
"Vikasati hi pataṅgasyodaye puṇdarīkam"
"The Lotus blooms at sunrise," why? Because there is between them "āntarah kepi hetu" "some inner, mysterious affinity." The attraction of the bee for the flower is natural in a certain sense. But the sunlight works on the flower on almost a different plane, their relation is on a higher plane and nearer the true expression of beauty. From that absolute love for the Divine as the Beautiful came the attitude of unconditional self-surrender known as Madhur-Bhava.
Tagore's sense of beauty is keen, colourful, universal and mystic. Beauty to him is unseizable,-though eternally alluring, beauty is the messenger from the unkown,—at times, from the Beloved. But beauty is unknowable and unattainable in life here. He calls her "Bideshini"—"a foreign lady" whom yet the heart knows—"ami chini"—"I know."
In his poem on 'Spring' he asks:— "By what path did you make your way to the earth, O traveller!" "Tumi kon pathe je yele"—"I did not see your coming—ami dekhi nai tomare" "You came upon my vision suddenly like a dream at the edge of the forest" ''Hathat swapan samo dekha dile, boneri kinare".
Tagore's Urvashi, an ode to the spirit of Beauty, is one of the finest poems in literature. Says he, "you are not a mother, nor a daughter, nor a housewife, O Urvashi, Inhabitant of heaven'! Beauty has no duty, it need not fulfil any social function, she comes into being full-blown, she has eternal youth ! (Naho
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mālā, naho kanyā, naho vadhu, he nandana vāsinī, Urvasī.")
When she dances her ecstatic dance in the assembly of the Gods, the waves of the oceans keep harmony with her steps, and green sari of the earth moves into rhythmic waves of ecstasy, the stars fallen from her necklace deviate from their orbits in the sky and suddenly the human heart beats in unison with her steps, and man forgets himself. Thus the dance of Beauty pervades every thing in the universe—heaven, ocean, earth, man, all is in rhythm with her dance.
In the last two stanzas the poet puts the question: "Will the ancient day when Urvashi walked on earth, ever return? The heart of the whole earth is pining for her, crying for her."
"No!" replies the poet, "Urvashi will never return". The poet calls her niṣṭhura, cruel, and badhirā—deaf—for she does not respond to the call of the earth. In the last stanza he says: "The moon of glory, Urvashi, has set and she is now a dweller on the mountain where the sun sets, "asta gechhe she gaurava sasi, astācalvasini, Urvaśī".
In some of his other poems like Balaka while trying to visualise the goal of the journey of humanity the poet concludes with a note of agnosticism. " Whither ? " is the question and the answer is " not here, not here, somewhere else, at some other place ". The beautiful vision of the poem emphasises the act of flight, not its destination.
The overtones of Tagore's poems are even more important than his expression. He is able to see the vision of the Universal in the particular, of the subtle in the superficial, of the profound in the simple.
In Sanskrit literature a distinction is made between creations of the Laukika mind and those of the Seer, i.e. ĀArsha. In Bhavabhuti's Uttararama Charita we find : —
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Laukikānāṁ lu sādhūnām
Artham vāk anuvartate
ṛṣīṇāṁ punarādyānāṁ
Vācam arthosnudhāvati.
" In the case of ordinary writers the speech follows the intent, the meaning, while in that of the ancient seers, the Rishis, the meaning runs after their speech".
This is an admission of overhead inspiration as a superior power of creation than ordinary mind. It also means that the creator is not a mere thinker but a ' Seer' or ' hearer' of the truth.
Rules of ordinary criticism in Sanskrit do not apply to these ' Arsha'—overhead-creations. In Greek literature also a divine afflatus is held responsible for great creation. Even today, after so much work by new psychology, the critics admit that the roots of creative power of the artist are mysterious. C. Day Lewis in his book The Poetic Image says:—
" It is a veiled vision, a partial intuition communicated to him from the depth of human heart. If he needs mystery, the last mystery is there, and of all that proceeds from man's heart, nothing is more mysterious than virtue, the disinterested movements of moral fervour and intellectual curiosity, the spontaneous springs of Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love. "
Experience of Rasa gives delight and so, very often Rasa and delight—Ananda—are regarded as equivalent. But there is a subtle difference. For the experience of Rasa,—aesthetic enjoyment, a subject, an I, is necessary. In the experience of delight the subject, the I, may be completely dissolved—or disappear. Delight can be self-existent,—without any outer support. Whereas for Rasa some outer support is needed. Even in the subjective aesthetic enjoyment there is needed a double action in consciousness, on one side a detachment from
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the experience and on the other an identification with it—which is the result of unity with the cosmic spirit. One identifies himself with the spirit of the poem, with a character in a drama or story, and at the same time a detachment keeps all personal elements aside. The individual outgrows the limits of his ego, enlarges his being, and has the joy of the universal consciousness. That is why Vishwanath, the Sanskrit critic, speaks of the delight or Rasa — as " Brahmānanda sahodara " "Of the same nature as the spiritual delight of the Brahma".
The meaning of the word " Rasa" can be easily grasped if we compare it with the liquid flow that keeps the tree alive. That sap is the " Rasa " of the tree's life. The life of the tree depends upon it. It is the same sap that transforms itself into flower and ripens into fruit. We get the taste, the Rasa, through the fruit. The Rasa of literature, poetry, music is similar to the sap that flows in trees, it is the stream of universal delight that flows through everything. That is why the Upanishad says: " who would breath, who would continue to live, if this universal delight was not there. " It is this delight which finds expression in works of art and the creator enjoys the delight while creating and imparts the same to others.
The capacity of aesthetic enjoyment is limited at present by man's nature, i.e. by his mental, emotional, vital and physical being. Man has been using the material of his experience from these fields for aesthetic enjoyment. Now and then, some sparks from some unknown higher regions have illumined his experience with a light that can be called divine. The acceptance of the phenomenon of inspiration, intuition etc. as exceptional, points to the mystic origin of such light.
But if man is a growing and evolving being and if ascent to higher plane than mind is the goal of his evolution, then his aesthetic instrumentation, his creative power, and the field of his aesthetic enjoyment of experience should not only expand hori-
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zontally but ascend vertically. That will liberate man from the limits of his ego and widen him to universality. Such an ascent is possible now by a conscious effort—though the aspiration is present in man from the beginning of history. The demand on the human spirit today is that he should make the effort now and be faithful to his inmost urge.
Such an ascent of consciousness, it is often feared, would mean renunciation of, or at least indifference to, life. That such an ascent to a higher plane must mean a negative condition is a current but mistaken idea. On the contrary, such a rise brings out an intensification of the powers of nature. So, the power of aesthetic enjoyment also increases in intensity, extension and subtlety. A rise in consciousness brings about a state of ease and serenity—it is based on a universal calmness and ease.
To Sri Aurobindo beauty is the highest aspect of the Divine, and his faith is that divine beauty not only can but shall walk on earth;—"Beauty shall walk celestial on earth" (Savitri). Three of his long poems "Love and Death", "Urvasie" and "Savitri" deal with the subject of love and therefore are concerned with beauty. The whole outlook breathes the spirit of one who not only knows true beauty but lives in secure intimacy with it. To him has come the vision of the universe, harmonious and beautiful. The beauty that one finds in his works is universal, its expression is impersonal and yet it is the most intense. Beauty, in his view, is not only of the intellectual plane, nor merely of the life-plane,—though he is familiar with the beauty of those planes—but it also belongs to the overhead. But because it is of the overhead origin it is not abstract, and airy nothing, it is on the contrary much more concrete. This can be very easily seen in his epic Savitri, where on four different occaions Savitri, the princess, is described: these descriptions are surcharged with overhead beauty and yet all of
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them are convincingly concrete and intense, full of the colour of life.
Sri Aurobindo does not get, as do some other great creators of beauty, intermittent glimpses of this supreme beauty; he seems to have his permanent station on those heights. And he sees and utters from those heights, the heights of intuitive vision, of inspiration, and overmind influx. All is securely possessed, truly felt and effectively expressed—expression that is, in his own word, "inevitable".
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