In this week’s FBA Podcast, we bring you a classic talk by Sangharakshita: “Art & The Spiritual Life.” “Art is the organisation of sensuous impressions that express the artist’s sensibility and communicate to his audience a sense of values that can transform their lives.” Using his own definition, Sangharakshita investigates the relevance of art and the artist to higher evolution. Talk given in 1969 as part of the series “The Higher Evolution.”
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Art & The Spiritual Life
(upbeat music) This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for Your Life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you and happy listening. - Madam Chairman and friends, as you've just heard our subject tonight is art and the spiritual life. That is to say we're concerned on this occasion with art within the context of the higher evolution of man. Or we can also say that we're concerned with that higher evolution of man itself in terms specifically this evening of art. And by art one means not just painting, not just the visual arts, one means all the fine arts whatsoever. We should also be considering the subject, not just in terms of art as it were in the abstract, not even the fine arts, but also more concretely in terms of the artist. Now in order to make perhaps all this clear, let us just refer back to the two lectures which we've already had. That is to say the lecture on evolution, lower and higher, and the lecture on the axial age and the emergence of the new man. There's no time for a detailed recapitulation of what was said on those two occasions, but it is important that we should see the subject matter of tonight's lecture in full and complete perspective and context. As by this time most of you will have gathered, we are concerned in this series, in this whole series, in all these lectures with a subject of supreme, a far reaching of all inclusive importance that is to say the higher evolution of man. And when we say man, we mean not some other being, some other entity, we mean quite definitely ourselves, ourselves as living, as growing, as evolving beings. Beings capable we may say of an infinite development, a development that culminates in Buddhist terms only with our awakening to the one true mind. Now in our first lecture we saw that evolution, evolution in general is the most important concept in the whole field of modern thought. It's a concept which enables us to understand the whole of existence, cosmic existence, as one gigantic process of development, a process of development from lower to higher levels of existence and of organization. And we tried in our first lecture to understand something at least of the nature of that development, tried to understand, tried to penetrate into what evolution really and truly and essentially is. We examined the mechanistic and the vitalist views, we found both of the man's unsatisfactory, especially the former, and we saw that one could best think of evolution, of this gigantic process of development in terms of a progressive manifestation in time of an absolute reality. An absolute reality, the presence of which, back of the evolutionary process explains and can alone explain, alone account for the emergence in the course of that evolutionary process of new and ever new qualities. We saw to use a poetic phrase, a poetic expression that that reality back of the evolutionary process was like a great reservoir on which evolution, especially human evolution, increasingly and ever more abundantly draws. We went on then to distinguish between the lower evolution and the higher evolution. We saw to begin with that man himself was included in this great evolutionary process and that we could study him in two different ways. In terms first of all of what he had developed out of, and this we saw was the lower evolution dealt with by sciences, such as physics, chemistry, biology, and also that we could study man in terms of what he will develop into in the future, what in fact he already is developing into here and now. And this, his future, his present evolution even, we saw, constitutes the higher evolution. And this is covered again by psychology, by philosophy, by religion in all its forms, and by the various fine arts. On our chart, which we worked out in some detail, on our chart we saw the lower evolution corresponds to the section zero up to figure two on the hypotenuse of that triangle. Whereas the higher evolution corresponds to the section from two up to infinity. Zero point, we may say, represents the starting point of the entire evolutionary process. Point one, we saw, represents the point at which consciousness, that of the human consciousness, emerges. Point two, the middle point, is the point at which self-consciousness or awareness emerges. And point three, still higher up, is the point at which transcendental awareness emerges, i.e. awareness of reality. And the point at the top, the point of infinity, is, of course, the point of nirvana, or enlightenment, or Buddhahood in Buddhist terms. And these points, we saw, divided the whole evolutionary process from top to bottom, into four great sections of four great stages. A, representing the infra-human, that it would say the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal kingdoms. B, representing the human, both primitive and civilized. C, what we called the ultra-human. And D, lastly, the trans-human, or even super-human. And in this way, we saw, with the help of the chart, that the whole process of evolution was covered. And we could also see just where we are self-stamped. We saw that man, at the best, we usually know him, stands in the middle as it were of this whole great evolutionary process, stands at the watershed, dividing the lower from the higher evolution. In other words, stands at 0.2. And most of us, we saw, we had to admit, rather regrettably, most of us are considerably below this point, 0.2. And many, unfortunately, barely above 0.1. And this gave rise, of course, to various reflections and considerations, of which was that humanity is something yet to be achieved. Well, so much for the first lecture. Last week, in the second lecture, we studied the axial age and the emergence of the new man. And we saw at once that we were dealing with a greatly reduced time scale. In the first lecture, we covered, or we were concerned with, the whole of the evolutionary process. We were concerned that it was, say, with a period lasting hundreds of millions of years, something staggering, something inconceivable, which we can hardly imagine. But in the second lecture, last week, we were concerned with only a mere miserable half-million, or so years. That's the length of that period, the period of the history of man. In terms of our chart, we were concerned last week with the whole section from 0.1 onwards and upwards to 0.8 infinity. And we saw, last week, that the whole history of man falls into four segments of very unequal length. First of all, we saw what has been called the Promethean Age, or the Age of Primitive Man, the period during which human consciousness emerged, the period of the discovery of fire, the creation of language, the production of flinch tools, the period which saw also the first crude beginnings of art and of religion. And this period, we further saw, and this was emphasized, this period, this Promethean Age, or this Age of Primitive Man has lasted for practically the whole period of human history. In fact, for the whole period of human history, minus simply the last 10,000 years, or at most the last 15 to 20,000 years, which means that man, for the greater part of history, has been, in fact, simply primitive. Now secondly, we saw the Age of Divine Kingship, or the River Valley Age, or the Age of Agriculture. During this period, as its name suggests, the agriculture developed, man started settling in towns and in villages, the alphabet was invented, literature, and so on, states and empires came into existence, and with them war and peace, and the whole fabric, the whole war-pun roof, if you like, of civilization, as we know it even today, minus modern technology. And during this period, art and religion further developed, and this period lasted, we saw just 10,000 years or so. And then we came on thirdly to the Axial Age. And this we saw was the 600-year period centering roughly on the year 500 BC. And it's the period, this Axial Age is the period during which begins the higher evolution of man, the period of the emergence of self-consciousness, of awareness, period of the emergence of individuality, of true man, or individuality in the true sense, period of the emergence of the new man. And fourthly, and lastly, we saw came the age of science and technology, the age in which we're at present living, which began, perhaps we may say, some 500 years ago. Now last week, we were concerned out of these four ages, mainly with the Axial Age. And we saw that this term Axial derives from Hegel through Jaspas and denotes the idea of an axis running through the whole of human history. And for Jaspas, this axis is the whole spiritual process which took place in the world between the years 800 and 200 BC. Jaspas, we saw like many other scholars and students of history and human culture before him, were struck by the intense spiritual ferment which characterized this whole period practically throughout the world. In China, it was the period of Confucius and Lao Tzu, in India of the Buddha, Mahavira and Upanishadic Sages, in Persia, the period of Zoroaster, in Palestine of the Hebrew prophets, in Greece of Socrates, Plato, and a whole galaxy of other great outstanding geniuses. And we saw further last week that all these figures in different parts of the world are rising during this period. This Axial Age had something in common. All we saw were individuals. All stood out and still stand out from the mass of humanity. All are new men. All have started, or all did start, to a greater or lesser degree, greater or lesser extent, on that process of the higher evolution of man. So that the Axial Age is in fact the age of the emergence of the new man. And we closed last week by studying some of the characteristics of that new man. We saw that he was distinguished from the old man, the man of the lower evolution, by five characteristics, principally, by self-consciousness or awareness, by true individuality, by creativity, by aloneness, and by frequent unpopularity. And these characteristics were examined in some detail. Now, we come tonight to the subject of art and the spiritual life. And I must apologize for the length of this introduction, which has hurried us through the contents, as it were, of two whole lectures. But as I said at the beginning, it is important to get this subject, the subject of art and the spiritual life very much in perspective and context. But I hope, nevertheless, that as from next week, with people becoming increasingly familiar with this material week by week, I hope that next week, we shall be able to plunge as it were straight into our subject for the week without too much in the way of rika petulation. Now, as I said at the beginning, by art, we mean all the fine arts. We take the term to cover painting, a sculpture, poetry, music, architecture, and so on. And by spiritual life, the other half of our title of tonight's lecture, we mean the whole process of the higher evolution. Incidentally, I must confess that I'm not very happy with this word spiritual. And when I was drawing up the list of the titles of these talks, I hesitated very much before putting down this word spiritual and speaking of art and the spiritual life. Because for some people, I know this word spiritual has all sorts of wrong connotations. When one speaks of spiritual life, they start thinking of spirits and spiritualism and table rapping and ghostly messages and ghostly voices and shapes and apparitions. So the word spiritual, I couldn't help feeling is best avoided. It's almost as bad one might say as the word religion, which has for many people similar unpleasant connotations. But unfortunately, there are really no generally current equivalents for this word spiritual. I did start thinking that we might start popularizing, perhaps, the term metabiological, which I've used before. I know it's a bit long metabiological, but at least it has the merit of covering all the higher manifestations of the human spirit. You see, there's that word again, spirit. Not only art, but also religion and philosophy as well. Now, when we speak of art and the spiritual life or art and the higher evolution, we are not suggesting that they are really two different things. Not that you've got art and the spiritual life. Art here, spiritual life there, joins merely externally by that little word, and. It's not that art and religion are related in a manner merely external. One might even go so far as to say that art is included in the spiritual life. The art that the fine arts are just one particular type of aspect or one particular type of manifestation of the higher evolution itself. This does not, of course, mean that one cannot lead the spiritual life, cannot participate in the higher evolution of humanity without being an artist. It doesn't mean that. But it does mean that one cannot be an artist without, at the same time, participating in the spiritual life, participating in the higher evolution. To the extent that one is an artist, a true artist, authentically an artist of any kind, to that extent, one is participating in the higher evolution of man. Now, this sort of idea, I am sure, is unfamiliar to most people. They'd regard it perhaps as an unnecessary glorification of the artist, and they might even strongly disagree. We know that most people's evaluation of art and of artists is usually a rather low one. They don't think very highly of them really, not in comparison with other really important things, other really important activities. Only too many people tend to rather look down upon the arts and upon the artist. And to think of the artist as occupying himself with rather trivial things, not with a real man's work as it were. I remember in this connection a little story. It's a story, I believe, as far as I recollect, from the autobiography of Sir Osbert Sittrell, which is a many-volumeed work written at great length, great prolixity. But it contains some very good stories, very well told. Perhaps you know that the Sittrells, one of the very brilliant families in which everybody seems to be practically a genius. All your brothers and sisters, aunts, cousins, uncles, and so on, they're all genius, which must be wonderful, we're growing up. So you had apparently Osbert and Sir Chaviral, and of course the famous Edith, all living together when they were young, in his vast old rambling family mansion. And one of them used to live in one wing and another, in another wing, that half a mile in between, half a mile of corridors, and there was lots of servants, this was 60 years ago. So the story goes, as related by Osbert Sittrell, that one day, one morning, he wanted to communicate with sister Edith in her wing. So he called a maid servant, rang the bell, and he gave the maid servant a little note. And he said, give this note to my sister, if she isn't busy. But if she's doing something, if she's busy, don't give it to her, don't disturb her, just come straight back, bring the note and tell me. So about 15 minutes later, having traversed all those corridors in both directions, the maid servant returned. And so Osbert asked, have you delivered the note? She said, oh yes. Well, was my sister doing anything then? Oh no, she wasn't doing anything at all, she was just writing. So this is the attitude only too often. If you're writing, or if you're painting, or if you're doing anything else of that sort, you're not doing anything really. So in view of this sort of popular misunderstanding of the subject of the arts in general, let's just try to go a little more deeply into this whole subject and try to see in what way, or in what sense art is part of the spiritual life, part of the higher evolution of man, and how also the artist is, in fact himself, the new man. Now, this will involve the consideration of the question of what is art, but we'll put that aside for the moment, and we'll first consider the artist as new man. Consider the artist as sharing the characteristics of the new man. Now, last week you may remember those of you who were here, we saw that the new man is distinguished by five characteristics, undoubtedly there are lots of others, but these seem to stand out to characteristics of self-consciousness, or awareness, true individuality, creativity, aloneness, and frequent, and popularity. So let us just pause for a moment before going into this question of what is art, and just to say briefly how these five characteristics of the new man apply to the artist, whether poet or painter, sculpture, musician, and so on. First of all, the artist is more self-conscious or more aware. The artist we may even say, the true artist, is more alive than other people. And this is very often revealed by the fact that is more sensitive in the full sense of the term, in the best sense of the term, than people usually are. We know that the painter is much more vividly, much more keenly aware of differences of shape, of contour, differences of colour, and so on, much more alive to, much more aware of these things than other people. I think I've mentioned before in previous lectures that if you happen to go out with an artist's friend, say, into the country, whether it's in the spring or in the autumn or some other time of year, you'll notice that you'll observe, you can't help up to it, that he sees more than you do. He'll call your attention to something. Maybe the outline of that tree against the sky, or the colours of a fallen leaf, or of a withered flower, or shadows cast by something, blue shadows, cast by trees on the grass. And he'll point out to you that those shadows are blue, and you maybe haven't noticed that, or almost certainly haven't noticed that. The painter has a much keener eye, he's much more aware of what's going on in the outside world, in the world of shapes and forms and colours. And in the same way with the musician, the musician has a much keener ear. He can detect differences of notes, which we perhaps can't detect. I remember that when I was in India, I was astonished by the subtleties sometimes of the drumming in Indian music, the subtleties of their drum playing. And these were difficult to detect, difficult to follow sometimes, even by a person, even by an Indian, who was comparatively experienced, comparatively trained in these things. There were sometimes unbelievable refinements and delicacies in the playing of that particular instrument. Sometimes the drum would be made to whisper, almost like a voice whispering. Sometimes it would be very staccato. Sometimes it was soft, sometimes as it were grumbling. One could get the drums almost to speak. And sometimes it's subtle differences that, as I've said, only the trained ear of the musician could possibly detect them and note that there was either something right or something wrong. Then again, we find that the point is equally sensitive to the meaning and the value and the rhythm of words. We use words most of the time, but use them in a very careless, a very coarse sort of way, not fully aware or not fully sensitive to the value and the meaning and even the texture of the words. I've already mentioned this evening, the name of Edith Sitwell, and in this connection some of her comments on words and their different values are of very great interest. She's not satisfied with speaking just of the meaning of words and the length or shortness of the syllables and so on, but she speaks in terms of the tone of words. She speaks in terms of the texture of words that some words are rough and others are smooth and some words are even hairy, she says. And then again, of the weight of words, some words are light, some words are heavy. So she being a poet is sensitive to all this, which usually we are not. And in the same way, the artist of what's forever kind is much more aware of his own response to all these things, his own mental and his own emotional states. Not just in the sense of reflecting upon them more than we do, but in the sense of experiencing these states, much more intensely and in a much more concentrated manner than other people. And then again, we may say that the artist usually is more aware of other people than is usually the case. And we see this especially in a very, very highly developed form in the work of the great portrait painters, in the work of the great dramatist and the great novelists. We see that in their works, other people, people of past ages and distant countries, live. I remember some time ago I saw in an art gallery a portrait painted, I think it was early in the Renaissance period, and I forget by whom it was painted, but it was a portrait of a pope. And you saw by looking at him that he must have been a very wicked pope. You could see all in his face every bit of it. You could see everything he'd ever done practically in that portrait, in that face. You could see it in his eyes, in the texture of the skin, in the shape of the mouth, and his rather grim, fixed expression. You could see that he must have come to the papacy by corruption, it was written all over his face, and much more than that. You could see all sorts of things. You could almost reconstruct his biography just from that portrait. The artist, the painter, whoever he was, had seen it all. I had not only seen it, but he'd put it all down there on that canvas in pigment. And as I said, we see the same sort of thing in the dramatists, especially dramatists like Shakespeare. We see the same sort of thing in the great novelists. We can see how clearly and how intensely these great artists, they do see other people. I remember, again, to take an example from painting that I used to think when I was much younger that hoghast paintings of people were caricatures. But after being acquainted, one might say, with people a bit more for a few more years, and maybe observing them more closely, I came to realize that hoghast was simply being deadly accurate. People were actually like that. He wasn't exaggerating anything. He wasn't laying anything on thick. He wasn't a caricature. He just saw them as they were. And as they were, he depicted them in his paintings and in his engraving saw them. In fact, with almost terrifying, almost clairvoyant honesty and directness. But above all, we may say the artist is aware, not just of the external world, not just of himself, not just of other people. The artist is aware in some sort of incomprehensible way of reality. Not in the sense that he's aware of or knows the concept, the word with the capital R, but in the sense that he is deeply and as it were resonantly sensitive to the meaning and the mystery of existence itself. It's this that he feels this mystery of existence, whether cosmic or human. And then again, the artist has true individuality. The artist is an individualist, or at least an individual, in the positive and not in the negative sense of the term. The artist, the true artist, never hesitates to go his own way. Doesn't hesitate to be himself. In fact, we may say that nowadays, even from many a long day past, the artist is notorious for this, for going his own way, for being or endeavoring to be himself. And very often, we find that the artist flouts convention and refuses to conform. Refuses to be just part of the mass. And in so doing, in refusing to conform, in refusing to be part of the mass, he's not just being eccentric, not just being perverse or difficult. He's simply trying to lead his own life and to be himself. And then again, the artist is creative. This, of course, goes without saying. Not just productive, though, of course, creation includes production, but creative in the sense of producing new values, values which do not exist, or which were not experienced or perceived before. And it is incidentally interesting to note that the greatest, the very greatest artists have always been, or in most cases have been, immensely productive. Not just one or two masterpieces, but 10, 12, 15, 20, even 100 masterpieces. In this field of poetry, we think of Shakespeare. We think of Goethe. We think of Loper de Vega. And we think of all the ancient Greek dramatists who produced a piece, at least 100 dramas each, of which only a few, unfortunately, survive. And in the field, in the world, in fact, of music, we think of Bach, we think of Handel, Haydn, Mozart, in the field of painting, we think of Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt. And these are all amongst the very greatest names. And we find that all are immensely productive, immensely creative. In fact, when we study, when we read the lives of these great artists of all kinds, we are struck sometimes with wonder at the spectacle of this uninterrupted flow of creativity. You wonder, how on earth they manage to do it all. How, for instance, Bach managed to produce that great mass of music. He mastered him working at it morning, noon, and night, uninterruptedly, and finding time at the same time to bring up nearly 20 children, I believe. Well, nowadays, we find it difficult with just two or three. And there was Bach pouring out, as it were. It's great, this marvelous mass of music under what would seem to be rather unfavourable of domestic conditions. And all this, all this immense creativity and productivity of these great artists implies, of course, a great steal of hard work. No DDT for them. They were up early in the morning. They were at their desks or at their easels, and they carried on all day until late at night. And this was their life, in some cases, every day of their lives. For years on end, writing to old age. And then again, of course, and this isn't surprising, the artist is alone. You won't find many companions in that sort of life. Like all new men, the artist, too, is isolated from the masses on account of his greater awareness, his greater individuality, and even on account of his greater creativity. The ordinary man only too often cannot understand why the artist should take endless pains with words, with sounds, with colors. The ordinary man might think, well, why not do it as well as another, or why bother too much about it? It doesn't really matter. Little bit more, little bit less shade on this comma going in, or that full stop being taken up. What difference does it really make? But to the artist, to the creator, all these things are the first importance. And we may say that the artist often feels his aloneness more even than the religious genius, or the mystic. And as we shall see shortly, he occupies a sort of intermediate position, sort of halfway up the higher evolution of man. And lastly, the artist is unpopular, or at least not popular, only to often the great artist, the really great artist, is in advance of his time, and advance even of other comparatively ordinary artists. And sometimes it takes the rest of humanity, even centuries as it were, to catch up. In many cases, they're still trying to catch up, or maybe not even trying. Only to often we find that the artist, the great creator, is condemned in his own generation, only to be praised in others. It's as though the voice of the ordinary people said that the only good artist is a dead artist. This is also well known that it isn't necessarily to insist upon it. But I hope I've said enough to show that the artist does share in great measure the characteristics of the new man, and that the true artist, the really great artist, is in fact the new man, and participates as such in the higher evolution of humanity. Well now, let us turn to the question of art. Let us try to answer the question, what is art? Well, what is art? This is surely one of the most vexed, one of the most debated, much discussed questions in the whole history of thought, especially Western thought. Though it's discussed also in the East, especially in India. But the discussion which has gone on in India on this subject follows such different lines that one can't even begin to compare it with other, with Western discussions on the subject. Now, some years ago, when I had more time than I have nowadays, I devoted quite a lot of time and energy to the study of this question of what is art. And I found that there are numberless definitions of art. And some of them really, in a way, quite extraordinarily. For instance, one definition which goes, "Art is an attempt to create pleasing forms." This is Herbert Reed's definition. And then there's another one very famous indeed in his own day. Art is significant form. There's a whole book written about that phrase. This is Clive Bell's definition. And then we find someone else saying, art is intuition. This is crochet. Well, this seems rather vague, the art is intuition. And all these definitions and all the other definitions that I came across, I found very, very unsatisfactory. I found them either too broad or too narrow or just incomplete. So I eventually decided that I would have to formulate my own definition of art, at least to my own satisfaction. And I did this in a little work which I wrote. I've forgotten exactly when, but either in 1953 or 1954 when I was in Caine Pong. And I called it the religion of art. I started to say it was never published because it was too long for a magazine article, being about 40,000 words, I think, and too short for a book. So it's remained in manuscript or typescript ever since. But I'm hoping, I'm still hoping, to be able to bring it out in some form or other, some a day. Now, in this little work, I've defined art as follows. I'm going to repeat it twice because it isn't all that easy to take in. Art is the organization of sensuous impressions that express the artist's sensibility and communicate to his audience a sense of values that can transform their lives. No, I believe, and this is my honest opinion, that this is the most complete definition of art that has ever been suggested. I haven't seen any, even since then, anywhere like I've ever seen. I haven't seen any of it since I've ever seen it since. I've never seen any of it since. I've never seen any of it since. I've never seen any of it since. I've never seen any of it since. Anywhere, like as complete as this definition, covering all aspects of the subject. So let's examine it tonight in just a little greater detail. There's no time for a full discussion. That would take us too far afield. But we'll deal mainly with those aspects of the definition, which have some bearing on the subject, with which we're at present consent. They have to say the subject of art and the spiritual life, or art and the higher evolution of man. Now, first of all, art is the organization of sensuous impressions. I remember reading some time ago a book on poetry. And this book on poetry started off by saying that we must never forget that poetry consists of words. You might think it's difficult to forget this, but apparently, according to the author of this book, lots of people did forget this, that poetry consisted of words. But we can go even further than that, and we can say that. That's very well. Virtually consists of words, but of what do words consist? Words consist of sounds, vibrations, as it were, in the air. So we see, we find that all the arts have as their raw material, their basic stuff, sensuous impressions. This is where the arts begin, with the impressions coming into us through our five physical senses. The raw material of painting is, after all simply, visual impressions, impressions of shape and color, of light and shape and so on. And in the same way, the raw material, the stuff, if you like, of music, is auditory impressions, sounds of various kinds, sounds loud, sounds soft, harmonious, discordant, and so on. And poetry, what is the raw material? What is the stuff of poetry? Again, sounds, but sounds associated in varying degrees, and they're always completely associated with conceptual meaning. So we have these impressions, these sensuous impressions, through the ear, through the eye, and so on, as it were, pouring in upon us all the time, things that we see, things that we hear, shapes, colors, sounds, and so on. And these impressions, the artist organizes into a pattern. At first there's a chaos, a chaos of sensuous impressions. But the artist, being a creator, organizes these sensuous impressions into a pattern, into a world, if you like, into a whole, so that there's no longer just a chaos of impressions. But the shape, this whole, this work of art. And there are, of course, various ways of organizing sensuous impressions, some ways are very simple, others are highly sophisticated. These different ways involve the principles of, for instance, repetition, contrast, and so on. Now, this organization of sensuous impressions, which the work of art essentially is, does not hang suspended as it were in mid-air. It doesn't exist apart from or dissociated from the artist. The work of art, the artist's organization of sensuous impressions into a pattern, into a whole, into a work of art, in fact, expresses the artist's sensibility. That is to say, the pattern, the work of art, which organizes the sensuous impressions, expresses or embodies the awareness of the artist. In other words, the experience of the artist, his experience of life as a whole, his experience of himself, of other people, even of reality. And this, we may say, is the aspect of our definition of art, which concerns us most at present in our present context. That the work of art expresses the artist's sensibility, or awareness, or experience. Now, this is, indeed, generally understood. But it isn't generally understood that this sensibility, this awareness of the artist, has many different degrees, corresponding to the level of being and consciousness of the individual artist. And this brings us directly back to the subject of the higher evolution. We may say that the lower evolution consists in the development of a higher and ever higher degree of life, whereas the higher evolution consists in the attainment of higher and ever higher degrees of consciousness and of awareness. Now, the true artist has access to higher levels of consciousness, higher levels of awareness and understanding, even, than the ordinary man. And this is one of the reasons why he is an artist. Because of this greater, this more advanced, this more extensive, this higher awareness and experience. Now, let us at this point at this stage see how this works out in terms of our chart. Let's see just where the artist stands. We're concerned today with the two middle sections of the chart, that it would say from 0.1 to 0.2 and 0.2 to 0.3. That it would say we're concerned with the higher section of the lower evolution and the lower section of the higher evolution. So for the sake of clarity, let's transfer this particular section from 1 to 3 to a separate chart, which I hope we shall find on the other side of the board. Now, on this separate chart, our line, our line 1 to 3 from that point down there to that point up there. Our line 1 to 3 represents the scale of what we may describe, not very satisfactory, the scale of artistic development. And like the other line of the other triangle, it's divided by 0.2, which is the point, as you may remember, of the emergence of self-consciousness. That still remains in the middle of the chart. Now, each of the sections, the lower section and the upper section, each of these can be divided. That it would be subdivided. 0.1a, we may say, dividing the lower section represents the average consciousness, the average human consciousness, the conscious of the average man, the ordinary man, halfway between the lowest possible human consciousness and self-consciousness or awareness. 0.2a, in the middle of the second section, the higher section, represents what we may describe as the highly artistic consciousness. The consciousness of the true, the real artist. So in this way, we see the line is divided by these points into four sections A, then the letters aren't there, but A, B, C, and D. I shall just describe them. The first or section A here is the stage or the section we may say, where there is no art. The second, section B, is the section or the stage of folk art or tribal art. Formerly, the majority of people were at this level. The level of folk art or tribal art, where one produced things oneself, things like pots or things like knives, if one's own house. But now, unfortunately, in most cases, in most areas of the world, folk art, tribal art, has been replaced by mass-produced goods, which are not to be classified, I'm afraid, as art at all. And then thirdly, section C is the level of the fine arts. And D, the topmost section is the level of supreme artistic achievement. Now, the true artists, the real artists, can't we may say, in that higher section 2, go to 3. The majority of them in the third section of the whole scale, that is in section C, and just a very few of them in the highest section, that is to say, in section D. Now, the latter, of course, are a mere handful. And of these, we may say that a few, perhaps, penetrate, at least at moments, beyond even 0.3. Beyond even the point of what we shall see later on, is called the point of no return. Penetrate right up into the trancing dent, but there's no need to go into this now. Now, from this chart, I think it should be sufficiently obvious that the artist, the true artist, has access to higher levels of consciousness, higher levels of being than ordinary people, that he's further advanced in the evolutionary process, that he has in fact entered upon the higher evolution, that he is the new man. But it's time now we return to our definition of art. But first, I want to consider a possible objection. Some people, I think, might be a bit shocked by the bold claim that the true artist represents a higher type of humanity than the ordinary, decent citizen. Some people might even be tempted to point out very, very nicely, of course, that only too often the artist, unfortunately, most regrettably, is wicked and immoral and selfish. So it's worth, perhaps, looking into this a little. One can readily admit that the artist, whether painter or poet or musician, can be rather difficult to live with. But this, I think, is usually due to the fact that very often the artist is concerned and rightly concerned to safeguard from intrusion, his own privacy, and his own conditions of work. We know too that a well-meaning people who try to make the artist conform try to make him like other people. They try to make him, perhaps, live like other people, dress like other people, look like other people, even whites like other people, paint like other people, and so on. And it's only natural, perhaps, that the artist tends to rebel against these well-meaning attempts, sometimes, even violently. And rather, ungrateful, he insists upon being himself. Now, we also often find that the artist is in revolt against conventional morality. Now, this is especially conspicuous, we may say, in the case of a poet like Shelly, who flouted all the moral canons, at least the conventional moral canons, of his day and was ostracized for so doing. But one might say, is the artist flouting of conventional morality wrong? We only too often have to recognize that it is conventional morality itself, which is at fault. And the artist's rejection of it is, in fact, in many cases, if not most cases, simply an expression of his own more healthy and more normal mental attitude. We mustn't also forget, and this is very, very important, we mustn't also forget that the artist of whatsoever kind is only too often a deeply divided person, that it would say, divided within himself. And sometimes, the greater the artist, the more deeply divided he is within himself. And this deep division is cleft, sometimes, in the depth of his own being, is productive of tension and of lack of balance, bordering even sometimes on madness. The artist, by very definition, perhaps, has access to higher states of consciousness, higher states of being than most other people, or than almost all other people. But this does not mean that he has access to them all the time. You quote Shelley, whom I've just mentioned. Shelley says in one of his poems, or sings in one of his poems, rarely, rarely come his style, spirit of delight. And this is only too often the experience of the artist, the creator, the poet, the musician. That this spirit of delight is higher experience. This experience of a higher mode of being and consciousness comes only rarely, only sometimes. The artist does not live in these higher states all the time. And in this, the artist differs from the mystic, from the true mystic, who tends to dwell in these states, if not all the time, most of the time, or at least much of the time. And in the case of the artist, sometimes in these higher states of consciousness, an experience sometimes in more ordinary states, in the case of the artist, it's only too often as though the artist were two people. When you create, he's one person. When he's not creating, he's another person. And we all know only too well that sometimes you read a book by somebody. You think what a wonderful book, what a wonderful person the author must be, how I'd like to meet him. And when you go along, full of sort of gratitude and willing to be full of admiration, or this wonderful book, which is uplifted you so much, you find some dry, withered, mean little man, and you're sorry that you ever set eyes on him. You're so disappointed. And this is because of this sort of cleavage, this sort of division between the sort of the higher experience of the artist and his more ordinary, his more normal experience. It's as though I said, as though the artist is two people, as though he has an artistic self, an ordinary self. And those are the sort of cleavage, the sort of division between them. And this is why, traditionally, we often speak in terms of inspiration, that the artist's inspiration comes from on high as it were, comes to him from above. It isn't him. There's this well-known story in this connection of Handel, when he finished the manuscript of Messiah. When he read it over, he was astonished himself that he'd written anything so good. And he was so astonished, we're told, that he just put down his pain. He's looked up, and he said, "It came from above." This isn't me. Now he's back in his ordinary state of consciousness. It isn't me. I didn't produce this. It came from above. It came there to say, from the artist himself, when he was in this higher, this supernormal state and stage of consciousness. And this is also one of the reasons why, traditionally, we refer to the artist as a genius. We speak of a poetic genius. We speak of an artistic genius in general, of a musical genius, and so on. And what does this word mean? What does genius mean? Genius meant originally, one's guardian deity, like one's guardian angel, or one's good angel. It represented the sort of higher powers over shadowing a man, guiding him, and directing him. Represented, we may say, one's own higher self, conceived of as an independent, or quasi-independent personality that was one's source. That is to say, the ordinary self's source of inspiration and direction and guidance. And we get the same sort of idea behind this, or classical conception of the muses. When you read, say, "Homas Iliad, or does he do it at the beginning?" He invokes the muses. He says, "Goddess, or goddess is inspired." And all the classical poets did this. Milton dies it at the beginning, of Paradise Lost, except that he invokes the heavenly muse and not the profane muse. But the idea is the same. You're invoking some higher source, some higher power, which seems outside you, but which is at the same time, really and truly, your own higher, your own highest self. And it's from there that the creation comes. Incidentally, it's interesting to notice an observation on the use of the word genius by that well-known modern writer, Nabokov. And he makes this observation, in the course I find an interview, printed in last weeks. Listen, I don't know whether anybody has seen this, but it is rather interesting, even though incidental. So I'm going to approach it, too. He's being interviewed by one of these rather person-nacious people who asks all sorts of questions, and one wonders how people sometimes have the patience to answer the questions, and this particular question is, whether Nabokov sees himself as a genius, he's being asked whether he sees himself like this. So what does he say? He says in reply, the word genius is passed around rather generically, isn't it? At least in English. Because it's Russian counterpart, Gini, is a term brimming with a sort of throaty awe, and is used only in the case of a very small number of writers, Shakespeare, Milton, Pushkin, Tolstoy, to such deeply beloved authors as Turjan Yes and Chekhov, Russians designed the thinner term, talent, talent, not genius. It is a bizarre example of semantic discrepancy, the same word being more substantial in one language than in another. Although my Russian and my English are practically co-evil, I still feel appalled and puzzled at seeing genius applied to any important storyteller, such as Moposov or Morm. Genius still means to me in my Russian fastidiousness and tried to phrase a unique dazzling gift, the genius of James Joyce, not the talent of Henry James. Now I might not agree with the destination of Henry James, but I think the force of the distinction is clear. He's using the word genius, but he might as I've been using it in the course of these lectures, in the sense of the true artist. In fact, when I read this first, I almost thought that he'd been attending these lectures, and perhaps he has, but there is something else that I'd like to draw your attention to while we're at it, and this is the interviewer's first question, and it's rather extraordinary, I don't know where he got these questions from, but the first question was, what distinguishes us from the animals? And what do you think Narbokov says? I'm going to quote this also, because it has a great bearing on the subject matter of the whole course. What distinguishes us from the animals? Now, this is what Narbokov says. Being aware of being aware of being, so I repeat that, being aware of being aware of being. In other words, if I not only know that I am, but also know that I know it, then I belong to the human species. All the rest follows the glory of thought per a vision of the universe. In that respect, the gap between ape and man is immeasurably greater than the one between amoeba and ape. The difference between an ape's memory and the human memory is the difference between an ampersand and the British Museum library. So I think you'll agree that that is very much the sort of thing that we have been saying in the course of these lectures and in previous lectures also on similar topics. But we really must not get back to our definition of art, which has got lost on the way as it were. We've seen that art is the organization of sensuous impressions that express the artist's sensibility with a high or low. And now for the second half of the definition, and communicate to his audience a sense of values that can transform their lives. Not much, very much could be said on art as communication, but this had better wait for the time being. It's not directly concerned with our main subject, our main topic. I want to deal with the concluding part of the definition, in order to say with a sense of values that can transform our lives. Now what does one mean by this? We've seen that the artist experiences a higher level of awareness than ordinary people. And out of this higher level of awareness, this higher insight, this higher experience, this more comprehensive, this more powerful experience, he expresses in the form of the work of art. Not only expresses, but communicates. And this means, this word communicates means that when we enjoy the work of art, we experience, for the time being, even though in the lesser degree, the state of consciousness in which the artist produced it. And this is what we mean by communication. He experiences, he expresses in the work of art. We enjoy the work of art, and we to experience what he experienced when he produced that work. Temporally, at least, we are raised to his level. Temporally, we become, as it were, artist, new man. Share his sense of values, his insight, his experience. And this transforms our lives. Transformation is evolution. It's not a change of place, but a change of level. So we see that the artist is not only himself more highly evolved, but through works of art, in which he expresses, through which he communicates to other people, his own experience, himself. He contributes to the higher evolution of other people, of the human race. The enjoyment of great works of art, we may say, enlarges our own consciousness. When we listen to a great piece of music, or when we say a great painting, read a great poem, we experience it, we allow it to soak interest. We go beyond our ordinary consciousness, beyond our normal consciousness. We become bigger, we become greater. Our whole life is modified, our whole experience, we may say, is transformed. On this gradually, if we persist our interests of this sort, this gradually affects the whole of our being. And eventually, as I've said, even our lives may be transformed. Now, this is very much the case, we may say, at the present time, especially in the West. This sort of recourse to art, great works of art, where the paintings, where the musical compositions, or works of literature, because in the West, traditional religion, conventional religion, that is a Christianity, has lost its whole. As someone once remarked, we're already living in the post-Christian age, when the monuments are Christianity, some of them very great and very glorious are still all around us, but they're dead and they're empty, they're only shells. Orthodox, traditional religion for the vast majority of people, for the unchurched, is no longer a means of grace. We don't get anything from it. It means nothing to us. It doesn't uplift us, doesn't move us, doesn't transform us, much less still transfigur us any more. Maybe ages ago, maybe hundreds of years ago, maybe in the last century, but not now. It's done with, it's finished. It's often completely irrelevant. People aren't even against it anymore. So what has happened? The place of religion has been taken by art. For many people, the place of religion has been taken by art, and this was the point, by the way, of the title of my little work, which I quoted from, the religion of art, the place of religion, the function of religion has been taken over by art, by the fine arts. And this is one of the reasons, I think, for the immense popularity today, of all the fine arts. We sometimes grumble and we complain of the decay of culture and all that sort of thing, but actually, we find there has been a great improvement. Formerly, the enjoyment of works of art was the privilege of a few. Five hundred years ago, if you lived in this country, you'd be living in a miserable, awful, probably, of whatlins' door, and you wouldn't have seen any pictures or paintings that maybe won a train at church. You wouldn't have heard much music. You certainly wouldn't have read very much, if anything at all. These things, the enjoyment of culture, the enjoyment of works of art, these were the privilege of the few, of the wealthy, of the noble, of the high and mighty in the world. But nowadays, we find that all the artistic heritage of the ages, even, is within the reach of practically all people. If you think in the past, if you think in terms of the great classical musicians of the past, of the 18th century, how many people heard their works performed in their own day? One Mozart was alive, how many people heard his symphonies and so on, maybe a few tens of thousands, at the very, very most. Sometimes only hundreds of people heard them. But now, over the air, through the radio, we find, these same works are being enjoyed again and again and again, by tens and even hundreds of millions of people throughout the world. So one finds a great dissemination of culture going on at present, which we shouldn't overlook, and these great works of art made more and more available to more and more people with the result that they're exerting a slow and steady influence and gradually refining and raising the level of consciousness and awareness, practically we may say, if not of the whole population, of a very considerable and influential section of it. And in this way, are contributing to the whole process of the higher evolution, contributing through these cultural, through these artistic channels, through the production of the new man. And this is why art needs, this is why all the arts need to be encouraged. This is why they form their constitute, an integral part, not of religion in the narrow sense, but of the spiritual life, as I hope I've been able to show this evening tonight. And this is why in our own movement, in our own group, the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, we have, as one of our sort of subsidiaries, an arts group. And this is why there have been poetry readings, and even sometimes musical performances, and so on. Because all the arts, the finance, are really an integral part of the spiritual life and the higher evolution. It might, by the way, be appropriate, just at this point, to let you into a little secret. And this is that we're planning to conclude this whole series of lectures with a special poetry reading here on Friday, at the 12th of December. That is to say, the Friday after the last Friday lecture. That is to say the ninth from the beginning. And full details will be given a little later on. Now, before closing for tonight, I want to say a few words about the psychology, as it were, of art or of artistic creation. How and why is it, we may ask, that for the artist, the production of works of art should be a means, even the means, of higher evolution? What happens when the artist creates? What happens? Now, much could be said on this topic. Kirstel, as we know, has written a very thick book on this subject. That is to say, the art, sorry, the act of creation. But tonight we have to be brief. There isn't very much time left. Briefly then, when the artist creates, he objectifies. And when he objectifies, he can assimilate. And this is not unlike what happens in the process of traditional Buddhist visualization exercises. When, for instance, in meditation we visualize the Buddha, what happens? First of all, we close our eyes and we see. Not just think about, we just see a great, say, expanse of green. Above that, a great expanse of blue sky. In between a great bodhi tree, at the foot of the bodhi tree, we see the figure of the Buddha in the orange robe. And we see the very peaceful features, the golden complexion, the compassionate smile. We see the curly, black hair. We see the aura. We see the five colors of the aura. We see all these things, and we see them as clearly and vividly as though the Buddha himself sat before us. We not only visualize like this, but we recognize also the great spiritual qualities of the Buddha. We see expressed in the Buddha's face wisdom, compassion, love, peace, tranquility, assurance, strength, fearlessness, and so on. And gradually as it were, we draw near to these qualities. We feel as it were, we are drawing near to this visualized image. We feel that this visualized image is drawing near to us. We feel that we are absorbing as it were within ourselves. The Buddha's own qualities of love and wisdom and compassion and so on. And if we persevere in this exercise, if we keep it up, not just for a few days, but for months and maybe even for years, eventually a time comes when, we as it were fully assimilate all these qualities of the Buddha and become one with the Buddha in that meditation experience. And when that happens, the unenlightened being, we may say, becomes transformed into the enlightened being. And we realize our own Buddha nature. But in the course of this practice, in the course of this process, in the course of this exercise, what has happened? What was potential in us that it was, say, Buddhahood? What was there all the time, unknown and unrecognized? In the depths of our own being, in the depths of our own nature, has become actual, has become realized by us, by being first objectified, by being seen out there, even though it is in here, and then having been seen out there, gradually assimilated, assimilated more and more until we become one with it. And the same sort of thing we may say happens in the case of artistic creation. We've spoken of the artist as having experienced something, so higher level of being and consciousness, and then creating out of that experience. But it isn't really quite so simple and straightforward. It's not that the artist has to experience itself fully and perfectly and completely first before creating. If he had it in that way, if he had it fully and perfectly, he wouldn't be an artist. He'd be a mystic, which is something higher, or at least something potentially higher. Now, what the artist has is at first a sort of vague sense, an indeterminate experience of something, and this is his starting point. He clarifies this, he intensifies this, in the process of actual creation of the work about. And we may say that the original experience of the artist, the creative experience, is like a sort of seed, a seed which is pulsing with life, but the nature of which is fully revealed only when the flower, and that it would say the work about itself, stands complete and stands perfect. Now, I hope that I've been able to say enough tonight to show the nature of the relationship between art. I won't say on the one hand, because that would suggest separateness, but between art and spiritual life. And I hope it has been made clear that art, true art, art in the real sense of the term, is an integral part of the higher evolution, and that the true artist is himself, one form of the new man. We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. And thank you. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] You