(Transcript by Tob Hawk)
When we think of Mysticism, we usually associate it strictly with the development of religious teachings, but looking around us in our modern way of life, we shall find considerable evidence of the continuance of mystical ideas and ideals in the more common institutions and procedures and practices, with which we are familiar. Therefore it seems appropriate to realize that Mysticism is not a sect, nor must it develop within the structure of sects.
Mysticism is an overtone, which bears upon many forms of life, many activities. Actually Mysticism is almost as difficult to capture as an adequate definition of beauty. Beauty is a sort of product, arising from other products, it is a byproduct. It comes to us as the result of order, arrangement of the power of the individual to perceive from within himself the unities and values that exist beneath the surface of various types of phenomena. In our modern thinking therefore Mysticism is a quality to be found in the lives of innumerable persons, developed variously according to the nature and temperament of individuals and also permeating and penetrating many fields of life where you would not immediately expect it to be present. Looking around us today therefore we can begin to recognize our indebtedness to mystical concepts and ideas. A brief historical survey may help to orient us in this.
At the time of the crusades Mysticism moved from the Near East into Europe with a tremendous impact. Mysticism arose among the islamic peoples at a time when their culture was reaching its golden age of flowering. It was transferred from the soil of Asia to the soil of Southern and Central Europe at a time when European culture was at a very low end. During this period, which we often call The Dark Ages or The Early Medieval World, European man was so far removed from ethical experiences as we know them, that he lived within an extremely narrow boundary of religious and political literalisms. Everything had to be accepted on its face value, there was no inquiry into the more subtle factors in beliefs or ideas. During this period in Europe no important texts were written, very little if anything came to us to bear witness of originality in man's thinking. It was only after this time, with the breakthrough of the Renaissance, that medieval man enriched by near eastern mystical attitudes began to move forward into what we call Modern Culture.
Thus we know that the Renaissance, although generally and traditionally believed to have originated in the area of Constantinople, actually represented a broad mystical tradition. It brought imagination back into the life of the individual, it caused him to recapture the spirit of dreaming, that had been lost with the collapse of greco-latin culture. In the rise of Renaissance man we find the individual daring to derive inspiration from within himself. For many centuries he had leaned completely upon institutional inspiration. He believed that in the vested clergy there existed a body of men divinely anointed to think, to lead, to believe and to teach. Those not belonging to this group developed incredible inferiority complexes about their own merit and their own achievement, and we had a time mutilated with this tremendous sense of personal sin, the shortcoming of the average mortal, his inability to have any part or place in the framing of his own destiny.
With Mysticism returning to Europe we find the rise of individualism. The rise of the individual whose source of courage and of certainty lay within his own convictions, locked perhaps by inadequate instruments in his own intellectual limitation, but nevertheless present as a powerful urge toward self-expressiveness. The individual began to think of himself as having a direct relationship with god and with nature and with life. Although it might seem to be a complete contradiction, Mysticism in Europe led very strongly to the rise of natural sciences. Mysticism caused the individual to question the authorities of Avicenna, and Galen, and Aquinas, to question formula as the solution to problem. Mysticism was opposed to authoritarianism, it was opposed to the idea that some other person could be an infallible source of knowledge. It also helped the individual to liberate his mind from the authority of centuries, the authority of creeds or sects. It was a breaking through of a spontaneous inner life, long repressed, long held and finally creating a terrific interior revolt in man. It was impossible longer to prevent this breaking through of the torrent of submerged individuality.
At this time the breakthrough was comparatively peaceful in as much as the mystic is not a person of violence. This breakthrough was a kind of an aurora, or a dawn light, a rosy glow coming in the sky to promise the coming of a better day. This rise of the sun of man, this rise of the light of the soul moved throughout Europe and brought with it innumerable reforms and changes, many of which are directly behind institutions and attitudes that we now regard as normal and commonplace. I would say therefore that from science to modern religion, there is practically no organized group that has not been influenced strongly by a mystical equation, although this Mysticism may no longer appear as a spiritual instrument, it may appear merely as a cultural or aesthetic instrument.
In our thinking about these situations we must also pause for a moment to give some note to the rise of mystical fraternities and mystics as individuals during the early modern period. We know for example the tremendous psychological importance of the rise of the fraternity of the Rosy Cross in the early years of the 17th century. Here we had a group protestant mystics, probably rooted in lutheranism, but individuals with the vision of utopian hope of future conditions that might prevail in society and in turn giving inspiration to a whole tribe of utopians, who have never ceased to envision a better state for man. We have the Mysticism of Jakob Boehme, the german shoemaker, whose works have continued particularly through the instrumentality of his disciple Gikto. The works of Boehme are still read and still considered, and there are small groups representing his spiritual convictions.
At about this time also we see the rise of the lutheran reformer Andreae, whose Mysticism impelled him to create unions and trade groups to improve labor conditions in Europe. Early Mysticism in Europe seems to have turned almost immediately to utilities and behind nearly all of its pressures were the instincts for human betterment, fraternity, equality and liberty. Thus your mystics became your patriots and contributed much to the freedom of nations and to the rise of religious tolerance among the peoples of the western culture group.
Now Mysticism, rising from these roots, moved directly into a number of rather recognizable channels. We had a whole group of mystical religious sects, not as clearly defined as most other theologies, but representing themselves through such organizations as The Friends, and The Quakers, and the various groups of adventists that flourished in the 17th and 18th centuries. Through William Penn and the Pietists of Provincial Pennsylvania, a powerful link was established between European Mysticism and the opening of our western hemisphere to colonization. William Penn, as a man of integrity, of enlightened leadership, fair play and powerful internal conscience, was able to accomplish a great deal in solving the difficulties between the colonials and the american indian groups. Penn and others of his general quality were to be found among many of the early settlers and resulted in a rise of Mysticism in this country at a comparatively early date. We can find dates as early as the late years of the 17th century that Mysticism was actually moved to the western hemisphere. Mystical sects and cults have continued, as in Western Pennsylvania, where The Order of the Woman of the Wilderness and The Fraternity of The Mustard Seed represented strange but basic mystical foundations.
In addition to these kinds of movements we see Mysticism emerging into our cultural life as the result of these overtones that have been captured on the level of creative artistry. Today probably the principal instruments of Mysticism in our daily way of living are the various branches of the fine arts. Here we have continuous emphasis upon a spiritual experience. I think the one of the most important of these groups of experiences are now associated with music. Music has always been a peculiarly intimate experience in the life of the individual. Music is a universal language. It requires very little of the ordinary restrictions of communication forms with which we are so burdened. The music speaks no verbal language, it rather goes directly into the appreception of man as in experience and it is gratifying and important to realize the great music is now returning strongly to our people. This return is undoubtedly motivated by the psychological need within man himself. It represents his instinctive recognition that music nourishes a part of his nature which is otherwise without adequate support.
The majority of your great musicians of the past have been if not mystics, strongly influenced by Mysticism, we may include in such a list Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Scriabin and many others. This recognition of mystical equation we also note in the rise of such groups of music as the wagnerian operas, where not only the music itself but the themes are very largely drawn from religious or symbolic sources. The great ring operas of Wagner certainly represent a restoration of nordic mythology and germanic myths. On the other hand the study of Wagner reveals to us clearly, that he did not merely accept the sagas and adas that had descended from tradition, he took these various symbolic forms and infused them with a metapolitical concept of his own. Wagner was therefore a creator of myths, he created a mythology around the mythology, and the more we analyze his music dramas, the more convinced we become, that he gave a tremendous mystical creativity to stories which had previously lacked these powerful overtones. He also applied these symbols and these Mysticisms to the prevailing problems of his time and as we know even during his own life he was in political difficulties on several occasions.
Music has become one of the most important forms of therapy with which we have sought to counteract the extreme materialistic expressions of our time. For many persons today music is their only experience of Mysticism. We say this fully aware that the music lover may not even be aware or conscious that such is the case, but music accomplishes much of the mood of mystical meditation. First of all, in order to enjoy great music, we must become receptive. We cannot attack music, we must allow music to have its perfect works in us, we must be prepared to be receptive, to allow the harmonic chords and patterns to create their own interpretation in our natures. Thus music can be wonderfully and subtly adapted to our own moves and we instinctively seek out music that is consoling, comforting, inspiring, encouraging, relaxing, according to the nature of our own immediate requirement. Thus while music may seem to be a very simple and obvious art, actually it has within it a tremendous power to change the psychic integration of the individual. It moves in upon him, creating a series of experiences.
The music lover must pass through a series of degrees of personal unfoldment. His taste in music must mature with his understanding of the principles of harmony and musical composition. Also music is an experience in law, we're under the beautiful coding and covering of grand harmony a melody, music moves with absolute precision, music is as relentless and inevitable as the motion of the heavens. Every part of it must be adequately mathematically defined and the great musician may compose apparently with great ease and rapidity, although some have not been so facile in this regard. Actually however, whether it is intuition, whether it is the labor genius of long experience, the great musical composition is a document that is essentially valid. It is valid in terms of eternal facts. The musician dealing with rates of vibration must handle them adequately and properly, or the result is discord. He cannot permit himself to break through the essential rules of his art, he is therefore creating within law and order, is expressing within the legal boundaries of the hops accord, the violin or the piano. He is moving according to true creativity. He is not merely producing as whim dictates, he is producing as law and order required. He is taking certain original themes, he is developing them, according to principles and rules that are competitively inflexible. So out of this experience we have sheer beauty, but this sheer beauty is sustained by immutable law. This lesson itself is of the greatest importance to us, in as much as it reminds us forever, that all beauty and all harmony arise from obedience, that the individual is great to the degree that he uses laws wisely, and he loses his greatness when he breaks the rules, governing the art or science with which he is concerned.
We note the rise of greater music criticism on the part of the general public. The distribution of good music, attendance to great music - these are increasing every day and they certainly tell us that man is discovering soul hunger, he is discovering the need for an aesthetic expression that combines the acceptance of beauty with a deep reflective devotional attitude. As most western peoples know nothing about meditation or the contemplative arts of the east, it is good that they should have music as a way to create a kind of meditation. They find in great music most of the experiences of Mysticism, in fact we even have numerous records of music leading toward direct and definite musical experience on a mystical level. We have reports of individuals absolved in listening to a great composition, suddenly see the orchestra and the entire involved area burst into light to see the entire musical composition unfolding is a great geometrical pattern in space, producing an artistry which would almost defy man's greatest ambition to depict such a scene with the humble colors, available on an artist palette. Mystics also have perceived or known music as a tremendous vibratory motion moving through themselves, they have found themselves to be picked up in harmony and to be lifted out of the commonplace and the everyday. There are many persons who find in music therefore a form of religious devotion, a devotion that is based upon a symbolic acceptance of cosmic music moving in upon them. They have to a sense at least become aware of the music of the spheres, of the music of space, of the music of universal law, they have recognized a universe of harmony and that is exactly what the mystic experiences in his meditation. He perceives the universe unfold into light, color and sound, he perceives these divine forces which he has adored with his closed and covered senses, suddenly revealed to him in the splendor of sound and the majesty of form. Thus symbols, arising from within the individual, give expression to the instincts and emotions that are locked within him.
It is good to observe the improvement in music and also it is good to observe from a standpoint of our general information how individuals, not possessing this type of consciousness, have permitted themselves to become involved in non-melodic or inharmonic music. We also observe the rise of syncopations in various forms and the innumerable modern music forms, which are not entirely satisfactory from the standpoint of great art, like I think that's a bit of an understatement, but very we feel very kind and benevolent this evening and therefore do not wish to hurt anyone. But the essential fact is that music of a discordant nature, music in which we find no aesthetic value or satisfaction, but which seemingly becomes a stimulant, we see the same type of situation as between nutrition and stimulation. The individual who is wise and who's a little run down, will certainly work with nutrition, but if he is quite wise he will refrain so far as he can from stimulants. He will realize that a stimulant gives him a pickup without contributing anything to his basic improvement. The continual use of the stimulant also results in habit forming situations and the gradual loss of its effect. Thus music forms that are dissonant and are essentially intended for stimulation purposes, must continually change, must intensify their rhythms, must become more and more clashing in their discords in order to produce the so-called stimulating effect.
We have observed this also in the gradual motion of jazz from a comparatively innocuous form to one which is almost pure stimulation to jagged and ragged nerves. The individual becoming more nervous thinks he feels better but he does not actually gain any improvement from this type of stimulation. Nutrition on the other hand is the feeding of value within the person, it is supplying the individual with the essential materials necessary for the sustaining of a true attitude under the pressure of circumstances. Music gives the individual available internal resources, making him more aware of internals, giving him a greater experience of what peace of soul can be. Also to discover the tremendous vitality of relaxing to harmony, to opening oneself, to true order to true harmony of sound.
As a result of this type of situation many persons who have very little musical ability of their own, become exceedingly exacting in their selection of music. A person who is listening to music merely because he needs the nutrition of it in his soul, can be music's most complete critic. The critic for the daily paper has a certain sophistication, he is not listening, he wishes he was elsewhere, but he has to be there to cover the concert. His criticism is based upon purely technical productions and can sometimes be brutally heartless, he has destroyed many a career simply because he was not where he wanted to be at that time. This type of criticism is not vali. But the individual, who has opened himself to the healing power of music, can feel a certain type of dissonance strike into him, can cause him to detect some major error or flaw in the performance, because it begins to hurt him, because he finds that this stream of blessedness has been interrupted, he may not know how or why, but he is quick to discern its effect upon his own nature and therefore quick to observe if the error is repeated, and I know individuals who have never studied a musical score, who accurately pointed out every floor in a concert. They knew nothing about it, they cared nothing about flaws, but they winced when they occurred, they were simply too sensitive in their receptivity to be able to accept a dissonance without reaction, without sensing that something had been outraged in their own contemplative attitude toward music.
With music we come upon other branches of arts, one of which I think also calls for some thought and now we come to the fine arts, such as painting and sculpturing. In the fine arts the world in the last several centuries has not been particularly fortunate in the production of mystical genius. Our whole western way of life in artistry has not been essentially mystical. Building our art concepts and canons from the greek old roman schools, we have always glorified form predominantly. To us art has been the representation of the outer surfaces of things. Our art has been a copying of certain aspects of nature with special emphasis of the west upon man and upon the studies of the human figure as it has attracted art of an artist for many hundreds of years. As a result of this particular emphasis we have become almost photographic in our art. The traditional and academic poems are perhaps more dominantly so, but our rebellion against traditional and academic schools of art. This rebellion has not been fortunate, it was not fortunate because we have now find the individual placed in a different situation. The music lover listens, he accepts, he receives into himself art as impact. The creative artist, whether the composer or the painter, has a different relationship to art, to him art expresses impulse, it is the release of himself into some art form or art medium.
In the western world we have not had sufficient emphasis upon the cultivation of Mysticism per se, Mysticism in itself. As a result of that most of our artists were themselves not mystics. Now, an artist can be great within the field of his own activity without being an essential mystic. We do not question the greatness of Michelangelo, we do not question the greatness of Rembrandt or Peter Paul Rubens, we know these men from an artistic standpoint were masters within their own fields. Yet generally speaking they were not mystics and even when they chose a religious subject, this religious subject gained a strange realism, a strange literalism, until the various sanctified persons seemed to be brought down to earth and made into very earthy beings. Art in the west was always dragging ideas and symbols down to earth and giving them forms or bodies of an earthy quality or kind. Having thus brought heaven to earth the only remedy that the artist had to restore heaven to its proper place was to place a halo around the head of some earthly representation. Therefore first he took a divine being and caused a model to pose for this divine being and then, having achieved as the result of his artistry only a human being and not the likeness of a divine being, he wanted to explain this, what he really meant to other people who had never discovered otherwise, therefore he put a halo around the head to indicate that it was a divine being. Everyone who saw it said “my this is a sanctified person”. But the sanctification had to be labeled and this has been true of most western art. It has never been able to escape into the sheer creative imagery by means of which it was able to give to the one who gazes upon it the complete impact of unworldliness. Western man has for a long time cultivated worldliness and it shows pretty well even in his most unworldly efforts.
Against the background of this general worldliness we do find a few artists, who have broken through into what might be termed a mystical artistry. Perhaps the greatest in more recent times to achieve this end were the english artists William Blake and Watts. Watts was one of the greatest painters of England ever produced. The Watts gallery in London is devoted almost exclusively to the mystical works of this man. Blake of course was a tremendous creative genius, a genius to break through the conventional roles and patterns of things, a skilled lecture, engraver and painter, he was a tremendous student of Michelangelo, but he went far more into art in the standpoint of pure Mysticism than his master. Of course Blake did not actually study with Michelangelo, who lived much earlier, but he was greatly addicted to the works of Michelangelo. Blake had a peculiar religious mystical philosophy of his own apart from art. He used his Mysticism as the impulse behind his art and many of his choicest artworks are illustrations to his own mystical writings. Today we know of Blake as an artist, but very few persons know of him as a writer or as a mystic, nor do they realize how he cooperated with Thomas Paine to contribute considerable assistance to the rise of american independence. It was the mystic type of mind that saw in the experiment of the 13 original colonies one of the most important movements toward the release of the internal life of man.
Now, there were other artists also, possibly the name that stands out among the classic painters for mystical overtones is El Greco. He was one artist that broke away tremendously from the literal, who began to to sense the importance of life moving through form. The form was merely a symbol and that to deify the symbol was to obscure the life. So El Greco began to sacrifice form for life and this has always been one of the great indications of the creative artist, particularly on the higher levels of Mysticism.
The difference between eastern and western art is very largely this matter of Mysticism. We know for example the names of many of the old beggars and poor relations that paused for Rembrandt van Rijn at various times in his career. We know that he had a wonderful skill to drape some old fishermen or ancient from the community in strange bizarre clothing and transform him into an oriental napa of some nature. Plus the tremendous impact of the Rembrandt lighting technique we have much of the genius of this master.
In the east however it is rare if ever that a great artist will ever use a model for any reason. He is not making pictures of bodies. This does not mean that he has not studied anatomy, or that he is unable to draw a body correctly, it means however that the forms which he intends or desires to use have first moved out of the world into himself. He has stored away in his own consciousness the essential knowledge of draftsmanship. He has put away where he can find it when he needs it. Certain impressions of forbes, he can draw almost anything that he wishes to draw from memory. This is the beginning of art from inside, for memory inevitably passes through certain conditions within the consciousness of the artist, an example of this will be found in the wonderful Prince of Hiroshige. This interior conditioning causes an ocean to become a different kind of an ocean, a wave to become a different kind of a wave. It causes a flower to be more than a flower and it causes the human body to be merely the shadow of a purpose or an idea. Thus the bodies of things are subordinated to their moods, to their motions, to the qualities which it is intended that they should betray or that they should reveal. In oriental ark consequently there is an other worldness almost always apparent. The connoisseur of art, the individual who has a great and growing and steadily unfolding appreciation for the nobility of art value slowly comes to appreciate this fact that art in the unworldliness of the eastern technicians becomes truly creative. It is not even dependent upon nature except very indefinitely and indirectly. It is the artist impelling the spectator to perceive value, to receive a kind of message, a message cunningly concealed in design, a message also that requires no word for its communication.
Thus in eastern art we frequently discover the peculiar lack of involvement, the simplicity of no time. We see the essential elements and the rest is left to the imagination. The eastern, contrary to the western, does not indoctrinate, he is constantly coaxing, the person who sees the work to release himself into it, to give himself greater opportunity, to feel and to complete a design or pattern.
It is not generally known that European artists, even the greatest of them, usually worked in groups which are sometimes referred to as workshops. In these workshops several men of sometimes a great talent collaborated on various paintings, for example one man would do nothing but faces, another man would do nothing but drapery and a third man would do nothing but scenic backgrounds. And we know consequently that in a work such as the Mona Lisa the man who painted the face did not paint the background, even a man of the skill of Leonardo was a specialist and in many instances the master merely added the final touches to the works of his disciples. But even where the master himself intended the work as a serious production of his own he cooperated with others and the portraitists and the scenic artists were two entirely different types of skill.
In the orient this is not true. The individual paints all of his picture. He must have therefore the sense of both foreground and background, and in the orient there is the curious trick of often subordinating the foreground to the background, so that the background really moves forward to become the dominant note and wherever this is accomplished, it is achieved without the sense of conflict, that often arises in western painting, where one is sacrificed to the other. The oriental artist, because of his technique and because of his own natural Mysticism, paints almost, as one of the old master said, “upon silk clouds”. Instead of painting on the piece of silk in front of him he paints first in a cloud in his own consciousness, he fashions an imaginary panel of silk, he visualizes it until he sees it clearly. He then proceeds to place upon this his design, arranging it and rearranging it perhaps a thousand times with his own interior visualization before he ever touches brush to physical material. Thus the painting is finished before it is drawn and it is only the transference of this finished product to its final visible medium that concerns the artist. It would be inevitable that some such a process should have to distinguish eastern and western arts because of the materials in which the two groups painted. To paint in tempera, or in oil, or even in watercolor according to western technique is far simpler than the eastern way and we observe in x-raying pictures and in cleaning them many layers of over painting in which an artist for example may move the position of a hand three times before he finally decides exactly where he wants it. This is impossible in the East, where you are painting upon fragile silk and where no correction of any kind can be made. This means the work must be exactly as intended, not even a single stroke can be widened or deepened, not a single correction can be made in a line. It must appear in its finished form immediately. Kobo Daishi, the great japanese buddhist artist, painted with 10 brushes simultaneously and was able to do this without making a single false stroke.
Now, many individuals would say that this requires consummate skill, that the way it is done is to keep on making strokes until you feel thousands of pieces of silk and throw them away and until you have become complete master of making the strokes. This is not the eastern way however. The eastern way is that all of this experimentation shall be done interiorly, it is done within the consciousness of the artist himself. He subjects his entire body to the discipline of the purposes of his mind and he brings the mind into such complete control of the body, that he produces a miracle that almost corresponds with the western miracle of the great artist on the piano. Here the fingers move so rapidly that it would not seem that the mind can possibly control them. In the oriental painter the hand moves with absolute skill, simply because it is fulfilling an archetypal concept that is fully and entirely complete. It is rare indeed that the eastern master has to discard a painting because he has made an error. It is the complete discipline of creativity, it is not mechanical, it is visualization, it is the power to so completely see a thing within ourselves that there can be no need for any change afterwards, it is already as perfect as our genius will permit.
This art becomes a tremendous instrument in Mysticism. We know that in theology it has been used for centuries for the dissemination of religious knowledge. In many countries the church depends heavily upon paintings for communicating religious ideas. It depends upon religious drama for the edification of a populous which is perhaps illiterate, but we must never assume that an individual, though he may be illiterate, is without the capacity to grasp through some inner faculties important truths if they are presented to his consideration. So we have in art another profound instrument of the perpetuation of Mysticism and the great struggle of art today is not so different from the struggle of music, but what we term today syncopation and music, or the various schools of jazz, have their art correspondences in painting in our various schools of modern impressionism and post-impressionism and cubism and these types of artistic endeavors. We find there also the struggle of the individual to break away from literal things, to break away from copying, from photography, from the actual representation of nature, yet in order to break successfully the individual must have outgrown the level from which he is seeking to separate his consciousness. A violent revolution against matter does not lead to emancipation, it leads only to deformity or distortion as a means of escape. There is no escape in art or in Mysticism through breaking the laws of color or formal harmony, the escape must always be by outgrowing the poor use of an instrument and the development of a greater interior power to use that instrument for the expression of creative genius. Therefore rebellion, unaccompanied by genius, produces the rather sad spectacle with which we are all too familiar. To be different is not to be better but it cannot be said that an individual can be better without being a little different. Thus the equation is extremely subtle.
In addition to our arts we and our music we have a certain amount of creative Mysticism in our dance interpretations. These interpretations based upon mystical themes, such as the works of Mahler and Bruckner, give us the opportunity of using choreography as a means of expressing our natural reaction to musical stimulation, or the musical moves, or molds, which accompany certain compositions. This is not only the refinement of the modal music of the greeks, but it is also an approach to the mudra, which is the posturing or religious hand positions of Asia. In the East the body becomes a tremendous instrument of dynamic symbolism, by posturing, by various positions of the hands, by various gestures sometimes referred to in the East as the art of gesture, the individual communicates, he conveys, he is able to release or reveal the rhythmic forms of his own body and to prove that this rhythm arises from a certain conscious control.
Thus as in the theater in Java and Bali in the old days it required anywhere from 5 to 15 years of continuous work, constant discipline to gain the bodily control necessary for the elaborate dance forms of these people. These dance forms were almost completely religious, but they were religious in terms of folk symbolism and myth, as well as in the theological meaning of the word. In these Dutch East Indian areas, which have since proclaimed their independence under the general name of Indonesia, in these areas the theater came directly into the home, there were very few formal theatrical companies, plays were put on by members of families and the theater was an essential part of life and here's where your Mysticism becomes a factor. The individual portraying various characters is expected to release through himself his own understanding of these characters, he is as far as possible to revitalize them and be what these characters represent. To do this he must become receptive to the great symbolisms involved in the mythologies and legendaries of the areas. He finds himself living again the dead heroes of long ago, he feels the heroic spirit stir within himself and having sensed or actually experienced a certain mood or emotion he must through the perfectly disciplined instrument of his body, trained precisely to express any and all moves with mathematical accuracy, he must use his body as the musician uses his instrument to become able to reveal in the most certain and definite manner the most abstract and almost incomprehensible reflexes of mind and emotion.
This type of discipline is so far beyond western stage that we hardly know how to compare them. It does not follow however that certain individual western artists have not discovered this. They have and they are the ones whom we regard with the greatest admiration because we say they can live their parts.
Thus in the dance and in drama, which we know to have been early related, so that drama as we know it arose out of religious pageantry and out of the great ritualistic dances of antiquity, here we again see Mysticism flowing into our way of life. It flows into us as a series of experiences for which we are learning to pay good hard money. We do not know what we are experiencing but we still find some experience of this kind necessary to us.
Let us imagine then for a moment that you go to a motion picture theater and you are fortunate enough, fortunate enough to see something worth seeing. This in itself is a most delightful surprise, but it is conceivable. Let us imagine that you are seeing a truly great dramatic production. If this is true your relationship to the theater, your relationship to the art media and your own relationship to yourself pass through a series of metaphysical changes. In the first place after the picture becomes important to you, you completely lose sight of the fact that it is a picture. You are not concerned constantly with the technical aspects of camera and angle, unless that happens to be your business. If the picture takes you to some far place you feel yourself to be there. You're also no longer particularly aware that you were in a theater. You no longer feel that you were sitting with a thousand other people. The world has ceased. Your own consciousness has become completely absorbed in receiving the impact of this sequence of pictures which you find completely satisfying, or enthralling, or arresting in some way. Thus there gradually comes around the state in which you are alone with a picture and then gradually your own identity becomes submerged in the picture. You instinctively identify yourself with the places for the moment at least wherever the camera goes you are there. Whatever time it goes into you are part of that time. Your own formal nature, as you understand it, becomes unimportant, you do not think of your name or your identity and while you are watching this picture you have no imagination as to whether you are old, or young, rich or poor. You have created a rapport with something that has moved so closely into your awareness, that it has obliterated practically every element outside of itself. If the film or the stage production failed to achieve this, then they have failed in their own peculiar artistry. If you can still remain yourself in your own time then your imagination has not been captured, you have not been picked out of an historical situation and placed in a mystical one.
This mystical relationship between yourself, in which subject and object appear to merge and mingle, is an experience that we have almost every day. Millions of our people attend theater and motion pictures and concerts and dance recitals for the purpose of enjoying these aesthetic forms, yet very few of these individuals realize that what they are going through is a miniature or a symbolical shadow of a mystical experience in themselves. They do not analyze the condition, perhaps it is just as well that they do not, but analyzed or not analyzed, the individual passes into a dimension of experience in which practically all of the common equations of living have been submerged or have been cast out of the immediate awareness. Later the person comes back to the realities of the times and problems, but for a while he finds his escape and what does he escape from? What does all Mysticism imply that we must escape from? The answer of course is that we must escape from ourselves as directive beings. We must escape from the peculiar tyranny of self-purpose over action. We must escape from the tyranny of the burden with which we afflict our own faculties. We must escape the weight of our own attitudes. We must escape the ponderous procedures, by which we complicate every situation in life and change what might be a natural and pleasant pattern into an unendurable complex of circumstances.
Thus Mysticism and its arts in our way of life reveals to us clearly that we only have to let go, that we only have to redirect our attitudes or our activities and immediately we are free from the burden of our own prejudices, and opinions, and attitudes, and pressures. We are free from our own historical selves, from our own oriented personalities in time and space. We become universal, we become all appreciation and no criticism, and this statement itself is one greatly to be admired. We become infused also with new things and new values. We escape the boundaries of previous imagination and we are constantly enriching an interior storehouse of recollections, which we can call upon at various times. Out of this filing system of remembrances new personality developments arise within our own consciousness. We grow and enrich through these experiences, by which we escape from self and become spectators of greater things. This is again of course how Mysticism has moved into our present mode of existence. The movement continues and now we find Mysticism moving more and more directly into our homes.
A few years ago, if you will remember, the city of Los Angeles went on the great spree of uprooting anything that looked green or alive. We found street after street completely denuded of every tree and every bush in order that we might have the fine, clean, inspiring line of solid concrete. Now the city is suddenly realizing that thousands and millions of tourists from all over the world can see concrete at home without coming here at comparatively high vacation rates. So now we've gone on the great tree planting experiment. Down the middle of Wilshire boulevard there are palms appearing that would do credit to the center of the sahara desert. Everywhere vegetation is crawling up the front of mortgage and loan companies, perhaps to give a certain festive luxuriance to the interest rates. In any event, holy edge is back. It is back because everyone got very tired of modern architecture and, as the great eccentric of architecture Frank Lloyd Wright observed a short time before his death, that it would be an excellent thing if people planted trees in front of every building, except the ones he built, because all the others ought to be concealed in some way.
Actually, there is a little apology in this tree planting epidemic. We're getting very tired of this fine clean line and we remember that the United Nations building in New York for example looks surprisingly like that 50 pound block of ice that the iceman used to deliver. These clean cold deadlines are not quite as happy as we thought they were going to be. They were greatly heralded, not because anybody really liked them, but that it was a cheaper way to build and the individual could pay just as much and get less. This type of thing led inevitably in our way of life in which art has become too heavy a luxury for most people to bear. To meet this we have tried to bring life back into the city. We do this because we want to bring life back into ourselves. We want to recognize nature as a symbol of life and we instinctively realize that from his conduct over the past man has become associated as a symbol of death.
Thus man to redeem his own works seeks to make them live and he ornaments them with symbols of life and of all symbols of life the tree is one of the most ancient and the tree of life is deep in the subconscious of human consciousness. In any event we observe Mysticism moving back as an instinct into the private life of the citizen through the development of beauty, wherever he can find ways of cultivating this quality, and to meet this need we have a tremendous increase in the development of decorative arts of all kinds. We find the person recognizing the importance of art in his home, the importance of art in his business. Today you will find great works of art in the lobbies of hotels. They are put there because people want them and, because if the hotel has them, more people will come and stay at the hotel, it is no philanthropy but it is a discovery, it is a discovery that if you want people you have to please them and if you please them you must do for them things which give them a sense of greater belonging, a sense of greater personal satisfaction, peace and security in themselves. Where such factors are ignored, in the private life of the individual, the difficulty is as real as it is in business, institutions and public buildings. We have come back to the need for proper artistry and in every home and even in the most humble apartment the individual of today is seeking mystical satisfaction or mystical security through surrounding himself with small but select groups of material that satisfy his soul. Food for the soul. And food for the soul comes from pure and true beauty and beauty in turn is something that can be known only by mystical appreception. There is no absolute and unchanging rule of beauty for the individual. Beauty is that to which his own soul responds and it is important if that part of his soul, which is essentially true, responds.
It is not enough to satisfy his selfishness or cater to his delinquencies, true beauty must have meaning, must have a wonderful subtle teachment, by which the person is assisted to restore his own internal integration. So we'll observe every time you go into shops and stores today that while there is a massive brick of brackery that does not mean very much. There is an increasing emphasis upon worthwhile artistic creativity. Better things along our lines are available now than for a long time.
Also we have had quite a development of what have called “museum replicas of works of art”. Today a great many persons, unable to own great examples of egyptian, greek, oriental or primitive american art, have found that there is a certain general satisfaction in an accurate and trustworthy replica, one which can be secured for a comparatively small sum, the original beyond price, and that this reasonable facsimile can become an ornamentation or decoration in a well-appointed home and add dignity and depth of meaning to that home. So this is another example of the arising of artistry as a mystical concept in the life of the person. He is demanding more and more soul satisfaction to keep him going under the pressure and tension of his time.
Nor is it false to affirm that in this present generation also there has been considerable restoration of mystical elements in religion. For a long time religion was the custodian of arts and your great cathedrals of ancient and medieval Europe are also museums and of the artistry which they preserved perhaps some of the finest is in the stained glass and in the great artistry of the gothic spans of the cathedrals themselves. These great temples were not only places of worship but shrines of beauty, so far as the skill of man was able to impart beauty and this beauty had a particular integrity because it arose from devotion and was, for the most part, a gift or offering of the master craftsman to the great architect of all things.
More lately we have seen a general deterioration of these values and we have observed the surprising and disappointing lack of religious creative artistry. We have seen our christian art deteriorate to a group of rather highly conventionalized representations, which differ but slightly in execution, though done by a hundred artists. We see the general lack of great religious art in these institutions and up to very recently there was a surprising lack of good music in most of them. It usually required a very large and prosperous church to have an adequate choir or proper soloists. Now music is returning strongly to the church. It is also coming back with better music, with greater emphasis upon important religious composition. For a long time we had very little religious music being composed. More is now coming and some of the new works are admirable, remarkable and valuable.
Also we are observing greater attention to what might be termed the various mystical prerogatives of religion. We see greater emphasis upon the development of mystical veneration in even the most severe protestant denominations. We see the advance of a ministry of faith healing. We see emphasis upon religious counseling. We also observe a tendency on the part of progressive ministers to change from the practice of 20 years ago, in which sermons verged resolutely into politics, and now we find them moving back again into a more liberal, but at the same time more essentially religious field.
Thus religion faced with the weight of its own membership and perceiving or sensing that this membership is heavily neurotic, that the pressure of circumstances are forcing the individual to seek spiritual consolation of a valid nature, these discoveries are influencing practically every religious denomination, causing the churches to work more and more to create centers of spiritual orientation, rather than merely meeting places. The progress is observed and there are a number of publications devoted to this, some of which I see and all of them are emphasizing the importance of religious Mysticism.
Through the sectarianism of religion also we see another mystical light beginning to break and this is the light of symbolic interpretation. The old literalisms of theology are disappearing rather rapidly. Religion is taking on a universal mystical complexion. This is important and as to a measure been forced upon the churches, but regardless of how it comes about, it is helpful. One of the reasons it has come undoubtedly is this global strategy which we are developing psychologically. For the first time the western world is receiving something of the impact of eastern culture, art and religion. The possibility of destroying these competitive institutions now appears too remote to be considered. We realize that we cannot dominate the religions of all other peoples, we cannot proclaim them to be heretical and sweep them away, nor can we ignore them. These various religions must play their part in the theater of our modern living, they must join with us in the solution of great problems, they must be given civil treatment, they must be respected for their merits and values and can no longer be ignored or discarded. This has brought with it a crisis in christian theology, a crisis that the past never faced even when challenged and that is the crisis of a world in which at least five major religions must live together and must live together with a temperament and an attitude, that is not likely to cause them to explode into mutual warfare.
Also we are beginning to realize the extreme danger of permitting sectarianism to undermine the friendships of peoples and thereby become a useful aid to belligerent or militaristic persons with dictatorial ambitions. To use man's religious prejudice as a way of controlling or enslaving him or turning him upon his fellow man, we hope that this has happened for the last time, and modern man begins to realize that it cannot continue without ultimately disgracing and discrediting all religion. To meet this challenge therefore, each religion has been forced to seek overtones. It has been forced to search out points of common agreement, the last thing which would have happened 200 years ago. Also the possibility that religions are interpretations of interior spiritual values, held in common by all men, such possibility is being rather carefully considered. It is becoming evident that religion as of itself is a value apart from all forms, that as a value it is a mystical truth.
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