On Art
THEME/S
III
Q. What is the relation between beauty, art and spirituality ? Though I thought of asking you first what is beauty I gave it up realising the difficulty of defining such undefinable terms.
A. If you like I might hazard a statement, not a definition: —"Beauty is the language of the All-pervading Delight of existence calling men to itself."
Q. Does it mean that beauty is universal ?
A. Yes, beauty is everywhere; from everything the All-Delight is calling men. Wherever man perceives beauty it is the Universal delight that is cilling him. And this delight (that he perceives as beauty) is present even in things ordinarily considered "ugly". That is to say everyone is not able to perceive beauty which is every were. One perceives the kind of beauty to which one is open. It is only the Yogin who can perceive it everywhere. Beauty and delight are inalienable in the ultimate analysis or rather experience of Reality.
Q. Does it then mean that beauty belongs to higher world than our own ?
A. It means that Reality is essentially beautiful and blissful; this Reality manifests its Beauty and Ananda on the plane of our world also, but it is no: confined to this world alone.
Beauty is also Transcendental,—it is a quality inseparable from the manifestation of :he Absolute.
Q. What you say looks like a metaphysical concept, while I want to know rather the nature of the experience of Beauty.
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A. The most general reply would be that the experience of beauty varies according to the individual.
Q. Does is not amount to saying that beauty like so many other things is relative?
A. Yes, there are gradations of the experience of beauty. And though I am not enamoured of metaphysics I must say that at times the knowledge of the metaphysical position helps one to ascertain the probable line of experience. For instance, if you accept Shankara's view of the Absolute then to you world would be an illusion. In an illusory world beauty can be merely an appearance. The Absolute of Shankara can have no such Lakshana.1 Shankara perhaps might admit Delight—a pure white self-existent delight, but not colourful play of Delight nor beauty.
Q. Is this not again ar. intellectual speculation ?
A. Not necessarily. It can be an experience along the line of pure Monism. In the intense experience of the Brahmic Consciousness the world loses its reality.
But as I said, that is only one side of spiritual experience. On the other hand there are many seers who have spoken of the Divine Beauty. To them the Absolute is not merely Being but also Beauty. They have said रसो वै स:—" It is the Divine Himself who is the essential sap of all Delight."
If you approach the Absolute negatively you reach more and more negation, whereas if you take the positive line it leads you to more positive affirmations of itself.
Q. I was asking about the experience of beauty. Don't you think that form i; indispensable for the experience of beauty? i. e., the experience of beauty is not possible without form ?
1characteristic
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A. On our material plane it looks as if there could be no experience of beauty without form—but that is not true of all beauty. Let us remember that beauty even on material plane is not entirely a quality of the object. The form which expresses or manifests beauty is not something apart from the beauty; formal beauty is not independent of the inner beauty.
But on planes of consciousness above the mental, form is not indispensable for the experience of beauty. Of course, our mind can distinguish between form and beauty and even speak of them as distinct things.
Q. Do the ancients speak of arts—especially plastic arts ?
A. In the Veda, the arts are spoken of by implication;— as also is beauty.
In the Ait. Brahmana in 6.27 it is said: "Human arts are an imitation of the Divine arts. It is in imitation of the Angelic works of arts that any work of art is arrived at here—for example, a clay elephant, a brazen object, a garment, a golden object, horse or mule chariot, are works of art."
Q. Some great artists, like Sj. Abanindra Nath Tagore, say that Yoga is opposed to arts because Yoga demands withdrawal of senses from the outer world whereas for art senses are the indispensable means of perceiving the outer world of Rupa (form) which is the field of art.
What is the relation between art and spirituality?
A. Art may be opposed to Yoga according to some of the old systems of Yoga in which Nature is regarded as a snare to be avoided,—an obstacle to the freedom of the soul. But it is not true of all the Yogas.—especially the Vaishnavas the old Shaiva and the Tantric paths. These Yogas
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advocated acceptance of Nature as a mould for manifesting the perfection of the Spirit. Of that manifestation beauty and art are an integral part.
Moreover, it is not true to say that the artist perceives the outer world merely-with his physical sense. As Sj. A. Tagore admits later on in his book (Bagishwari lectures.) the artist has several eyes.
For example:—
i)The ordinary physical eye.
ii)The keen, bird's eye.
iii)The mental eye.
iv)The eye of vision.
And this inner faculty of seeing is closely connected with Yoga. So that Yoga instead of crippling the art-faculties should on the contrary develop, stimulate and enhance them.
Q. I was in fact, struck by Sj. A. Tagore's unconscious support and tribute to Yoga, for, later on he quotes Kabir's idea of Sahaja-samadhi and advocates it as the ideal condition for the artist!
In that song Kabir speaks of keeping the doors of his senses open and perceiving through them the delight of Divine Beauty everywhere—in all forms.
A. But Kabir did not get the vision of this all-pervading Divine Beauty by merely keeping his senses open to the outer world. For, in that case all should have that perception because all men keep their senses open to the world of forms.
Nor could Kabir have perceived or seen this beauty with his physical eye only, because the beauty he speaks of is evidently not objective. That experience must have
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been the result of long period of spiritual discipline or Yoga. The vision of the All-beautiful must have come to Kabir first in his inner consciousness i.e., as an inner realisation. And then the experience must have become strong enough to influence his outer senses. So that even the physical senses were able to participate in the same vision. No one can say that Kabir was not a Yogi.
Q- The question: "If beauty is everywhere, as you say, then why does not everybody perceive it?" still remains in my mind.
A. The devotee sees the Divine Beauty because he seeks the Divine as the All-beautiful {Bhuvana Sundara); he seeks Him as the " treasure of all Beauty" (Nikhila Saundarya Nidhi); as the " ambrosial ocean of the essence of all Beauty (Akhilarasāmrita sindhu) as the Vaishnavas say.
And this vision does not come merely by wanting it. It usually comes when one is prepared to pay for it by giving up all the cravings of the senses and the impulses and desires of the vital.
Thus the spiritual seeker, the poet and the artist all seek the same Reality, and at times by very similar methods.
Q. Does the Yogi then perceive the same Beauty everywhere irrespective of the outer form ? i. e. Is the beauty he per' ceives uniform ?
A. There is an experience in which all things—whether ordinarily considered ugly or beautiful—are equally beautiful because in everything it is the Divine Presence that equally animates the form. But as Sri Aurobindo puts in one of his letters "In the Yogin's vision of universal beauty, all becomes beautiful, but all is not reduced to a single level. There are gradations in his All-beauty......
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All is Divine but some things are more Divine than others. In the artist's vision too there can be gradations, a hierarchy of values. " There is, you can say, an art that pleases, an art that satisfies ambition, an art that succeeds, an art that is useful and an art that touches the Divine etc.
Q. Do the ancient texts speak of the process of art-creation ?
A. Yes, they do. And what they say establishes a close connection between art and spirituality. The Shukra-nitisāra lays down that the artist must be a man who can meditate. He must do his work—Dhyātwā kuryāt—"after meditation upon it." So that art was expected to be the result of an inner concentration. The work of art must first be realised within the consciousness of the artist, held before his inner eye and at last projected outwards through perfect mastery over the material by refined and trained instrumentality of the senses. In Europe also the ideal and method of art was similar in the beginning,
Q. I do not quite understand why an artist, say, a painter or a sculptor, should be expected to meditate.
A. The idea seems a little strange to the modernist mind but as a matter of fact I believe the process is familiar in the great artists all over the world. Perhaps the ancient Indians studied the process and arrived at a correct understanding of it.
For instance, if the artist wants to represent a God in sculpture or painting, he has at first to visualise the form of the God in an inner vision and then only to paint or sculpt it.
At times he may arrive at the form by coming in contact with the higher worlds of being or planes of consciousness. In that case the artist brings back the memory of the forms
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and reproduces them here in the material world. In some cases some superhuman agency—a higher being for instance, uses the artist as a medium for its self-expression.
A work of art may be revealed to the artist even in dream.
Q. Does this happen to the Indian artist or is it common to all artists?
A. Ancient Greek artists, it is said, experienced the feeling of exuberation and exaltation during periods of creative activity. There is evidence that all great artists had contact with a higher world of which most of them were occasionally or always conscious.
Q. Granting that the artist must create according to his inner vision, I don't understand why he should be asked to meditate on forms according to fixed formula or Dhyan Mantras, as is prescribed in ancient Indian texts.
A. I quite agree with you. Perhaps, in old times, the ordinary artist was not so conscious of his aim and method as the artist of to-day and so definite formulas had to be prescribed for him to habituate him to look inward and to fix the tradition.
But to-day we need not remain bound to these formulas. There is no reason why art should go on repeating the same forms in order to express the higher Reality of the worlds above mind. For instance, Shiva and Ganesh need not have their steriotyped forms. As an illustration take the paintings of Shiva by the great artist Nandalal Bose in which the traditional rules of technique have not been strictly adhered to. And yet the work does not seem to be less authentic on that account. The artist of today must be free to have his own vision and create accordingly.
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Q. From what you say it seems that the forms created by the artist pre-exist somewhere in the subtle worlds?
A. Most of them do. Only, it does not follow that these forms are always bound to correspond to the ones created here.
Q. You said that form is not indispensable for the experience of beauty while I have heard artists say that form is indis-pensable for creation.
A. You are confusing two things,—Experience of beauty and artistic creation. To creation form is indispensable: there can be no creation without form. But that is not true of all experience of beauty.
Q. Speaking of art-creation I am reminded of the modernist trend which considers the expression of the artist's personality as the chief and the highest aim of art. It is this expression of personality they say that gives each art-creation its special value, its uniqueness.
A. To the greatest and true artist art is not a means of expressing his personality but his inspiration. As the Mother says (in "Words of the Mother") True artists look upon art "as a means of expressing their relation with the Divine".
Q. Do you then think that the personality of the artist is some' thing superficial and shallow and that what really matters is the inspiration that comes down through him from above —his personality being only a channel—a thing of no value whatever ?
A. That would be perhaps too trenchant a way of putting it. For, after all, it is the personality of the artist that receives the inspiration and in most cases it has to rise higher than ordinary man in order to receive it,
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A great work of art, it must be noted, bears the stamp of its creator. Even in the same field of work each great artist leaves his own stamp on his work. For example, take the Greek dramatist Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus or the French trio. Voltaire, Racine, Corneille —you will find the distinguishing stamp of each on his work.
A soul expressing the eternal spirit of Truth and Beauty through some of the infinite variations of beauty, with the word for its instrument, that is, after all, what the poet is and it is to a similar soul in us seeking the same spirit and responding to it that he makes his appeal...It is the impersonal sprit of Truth and Beauty that is seeking to express itself through personality and it is that which finds its own word and seems itself to create in highest moments of inspiration.
—(From Sri Aurobindo's "The Future Poetry")
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