Friedrich Schiller's message of freedom and love of the great spiritual potential that humans are capable of attaining
We are dead groups of matter when we hate A single wheel impels the whole machine Matter and spirit; yea, that simple law, Pervading nature, which our Newton saw... Did not the same strong mainspring urge and guide Our hearts to meet in love's eternal bond?... Happy, O happy - I have found thee-I Have out of millions found thee, and embraced; Thou, out of millions, mine!... Do I not find within thy radiant eyes Fairer reflections of all joys most fair? In thee I marvel at myself - the dyes Of lovely earth seem lovelier painted there, And in the bright looks of the friend is given We are dead groups of matter when we hate; But when we love we are as gods!- Unto The gentle fetters yearning, through each state And shade of being multiform, and through All countless spirits (save of all the sire)- Moves, breathes, and blends, the one divine desire... everywhere we seek Union and bond - till in one sea sublime Of love be merged all measure and all time!... "Friendship" by Friedrich von Schiller
The voice of our age seems by no means favorable to art...For art has to leave reality, it has to raise itself bodily above necessity and neediness; for art is the daughter of freedom, and it requires its prescriptions and rules to be furnished by the necessity of spirits and not by that of matter. But in our day it is necessity, neediness, that prevails, and bends a degraded humanity under its iron yoke. Utility is the great idol of the time, to which all powers do homage and all subjects are subservient. In this great balance of utility, the spiritual service of art has no weight, and, deprived of all encouragement, it vanishes from the noisy Vanity Fair of our time. The very spirit of philosophical inquiry itself robs the imagination of one promise after another, and the frontiers of art are narrowed, in proportion as the limits of science are enlarged...
I hope that I shall succeed in convincing you that this matter of art is less foreign to the needs than to the tastes of our age; nay, that, to arrive at a solution even in the political problem, the road of aesthetics must be pursued, because it is through beauty that we arrive at freedom. Friedrich Schiller, Letters Upon The Aesthetic Education of Man
Friedrich Schiller, Letters Upon The Aesthetic Education of Man
The creative imagination became the way to unify man’s psyche and, by extension, to reunify man with nature, to return by the paths of self-consciousness to a state of higher nature, a state of the sublime where senses, mind, and spirit elevate the world around them even as they elevate themselves. James Engell
For Blake, ‘imagination is nothing less than God as he operates in the human soul. It follows that any act of creation performed by the imagination is divine and that in the imagination man’s spiritual nature is fully and finally realized’
I know, you never intended to be in this world. But you’re in it all the same. So why not get started immediately. I mean, belonging to it. There is so much to admire, to weep over. And to write music or poems about. Bless the feet that take you to and fro. Bless the eyes and the listening ears. Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste. Bless touching. You could live a hundred years, it’s happened. Or not. I am speaking from the fortunate platform of many years, none of which, I think, I ever wasted. Do you need a prod? Do you need a little darkness to get you going? Let me be as urgent as a knife, then, and remind you of Keats, so single of purpose and thinking, for a while, he had a lifetime.
Mary Oliver Poetry
going beyond the limits and barriers separating different cultures
I want to go beyond the limits and barriers separating different cultures, mixing different music styles and let them flow and dance together. Music is the one language in the world that everybody understands, across all cultures, religions and beliefs - music for body, heart and soul. Rhythym is food for the body, melody nourishes the heart and atmospheres fill the soul - and my music touches the listener on all these three levels. Karunesh
“Without the senses there is no memory, and without memory there is no intelligence,” Voltaire in his Aventure de la mémoire (1773), part of his intercessions in behalf of victims of political injustice and ignorance, where his subtle wit and satire leave a much stronger mark on the reader than the contemporary empty, loud and goofy comedies.
Our individual memory often hinges on the facts, knowledge and experiences that are dear and close to us, or that have made a deep impression on us. The sum total of all these memories shapes the historical memory of a people, which in turn determines our ability to keep alive not only the memory of heroic and extraordinary feats accomplished by men and women of the past, but also the tragedy and suffering of individuals who have struggled – often alone, as in the case of the Maid of Orleans – against stifling ideologies and lethal fanaticism.
Voltaire's Aventure de la mémoire
Bhagavad-Gita
In the Bhagavad-Gita (IV:31), Krishna, the Higher Self of all human beings, assures his disciple Arjuna that he is continually reborn as a a world benefactor. “I produce myself among creatures whenever there is a decline of virtue and an insurrection of vice and injustice in the world,” says Krishna, “and thus I incarnate from age to age for the preservation of the just, the destruction of the wicked, and the establishment of righteousness.”
Mozart - Piano Concerto No.23 In A Major, K 488 -II. Adagio
Johann Sebastian Bach - Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565
Four Quartets are four interlinked meditations with the common theme being man's relationship with time, the universe, and the divine. Each poem has five sections, each of the five sections holds a theme that is common to each of the poems: time, experience, purgation, prayer, and wholeness.
Burnt Norton Part I, begins with a narrator recalling a moment in a garden, focusing on images and sounds like the bird, the roses, clouds, and an empty pool. In Part II, the narrator's meditation leads him/her to reach "the still point" in which he doesn't try to get anywhere or to experience place and/or time, instead experiencing "a grace of sense." In Part III, the meditation experience becomes darker as night come on, and by Part IV, it is night and "Time and the bell have buried the day." In Part V, the narrator reaches a contemplative end to his/her meditation. The narrator focuses particularly on the poet's art of manipulating "Words [which] strain,/Crack and sometimes break, under the burden [of time], under the tension, slip, slide, perish, decay with imprecision, [and] will not stay in place, /Will not stay still." By comparison, the narrator concludes that "Love is itself unmoving,/Only the cause and end of movement,/Timeless, and undesiring." For this reason, this spiritual experience of "Love" is the form of consciousness that most interests the narrator.
T. S. Eliot Poems, The Four Quartets
T. S. Eliot Poems, The Four Quartets
East Coker focuses on life, death, and continuity between the two. The time theme is stated in the first section as 'In my beginning is my end' which, given proper attention, might prove to lead into the eternal moment. The second section discusses disorder within nature, Also, rational knowledge itself is described as being inadequate for explaining reality. Those who pursue only reason and science are ignorant. Even our progress is not progress as we continue to repeat the same errors as the past. The third section discusses the rulers of secular society and their flaws. The fourth deploys a series of Baroque paradoxes in the context of the Good Friday mass. This past manner is regarded ironically by the poet in the fifth section as he looks back on his period of experimentation in 'the years of l'entre deux guerres' as 'largely wasted'. He welcomes approaching old age as a new opportunity to find renewal, although it might only be a rediscovery of 'what has been lost and found and lost again'. Eliot explains within the poem that we are all interconnected through time and that we must realize this. Only through this realization is mankind able to understand the truth of the universe. This, in turn, would allow humanity to break free from the burden of time. In a letter dated 9 February 1940, Eliot stated, "We can have very little hope of contributing to any immediate social change; and we are more disposed to see our hope in modest and local beginnings, than in transforming the whole world at once... We must keep alive aspirations which can remain valid throughout the longest and darkest period of universal calamity and degradation."
The Dry Salvages begins with images of the sea, water, and of Eliot's past; this water later becomes a metaphor for life and how humans act. According to the poem, there is a connection to all of mankind within each man. If we just accept drifting upon the sea, then we will end up broken upon rocks. What we must do is understand the patterns found within the past in order to see that there is meaning to be found. This meaning allows one to experience eternity through moments of revelation.
Little Gidding discusses time and winter, with attention paid to the arrival of summer. The images of snow, which provoke desires for a spiritual life, transition into an analysis of the four classical elements of fire, earth, air and water and how fire is the primary element of the four. In the second section, there is a ghost who is the compilation of various poets. When the ghost joins the poet, the narrator states "Knowing myself yet being someone other". This suggests that the different times merge at the same time that the different personalities begin to merge, allowing a communication and connection with the dead. The end of the poem describes how Eliot has attempted to help the world as a poet. He parallels his work in language with working on the soul or working on society.
T. S. Eliot Poems, The Four Quartets
DuBois — integrity, honesty, decency and virtue
“How shall Integrity face Oppression? What shall Honesty do in the face of Deception, Decency in the face of Insult...?... What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force? There are so many answers and so contradictory; and such differences for those on the one hand who meet questions similar to this once a year or once a decade, and those who face them hourly and daily.” W.E.B. Du Bois
“When I started with that quote from DuBois — integrity, honesty, decency and virtue — they must never be reduced to market value,..God gave us a mind and we have to think, challenge ourselves, take critical self inventory ; To think critically is just as necessary as love. Who are we and what kind of human beings will we choose to be in our short move from our mama's womb to tomb. That's the fundamental question." Cornel West (The Axworthy Distinguished Lecture Series on Social Justice and the Public Good). In this lecture, Cornel West also referred to Martin Luther King's warning of Spiritual Death: “I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered...Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. We still have a choice today... We must move past indecision to action..."
Rhythm is the architecture of being, the inner dynamic that gives it form, the pure expression of the life force. Rhythm is the vibratory force which, through our sense, grips us at the root of our being. It is expressed through corporeal and sensual means; through lines, surfaces, colors and volumes in architecture, sculpture or painting; through accents in poetry and music; through movements in the dance. But, doing this, rhythm turns all these concrete things towards the light of the spirit. In the degree to which rhythm is sensuously embodied, it illuminates the spirit... Only rhythm gives the word its effective fullness; it is the word of God, that is, the rhythmic word, that created the world. Leopold Sedar Senghor
Rhythm is the architecture of being
Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain
”It is not as an author that I would speak to you, not as a story-teller, not as a philosopher, not as a friend only: I seek to speak to you, in some way, as your own self. Who can tell what this may mean? I myself do not know. But if you listen, things will be said that are perhaps not written in this book. And this will be due not to me, but to the One who lives and speaks in both!” Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain
Franz Liszt - 12 Transcendental Etudes & Gnomenreigen
Chopin, Nocturne in C-sharp minor, Op. Posth "To my sister Ludwika as an exercise before beginning the study of my second Concerto"
Frédéric Chopin Piano Concerto N.º 2 Op. 21 in F minor
Franz Liszt - CONSOLATION NO. 3 IN D-FLAT MAJOR, S.172
Edvard Grieg - Piano Concerto in A minor Op. 16
Saint-Saëns - Piano Concerto No 2 in G minor, Op 22
Franz Schubert, Impromptu No 2 in E-flat major, D 899
Man With A Harmonica - Ennio Morricone
“How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but—mainly—to ourselves.”
“Also, when you are young, you think you can predict the likely pains and bleaknesses that age might bring. You imagine yourself being lonely, divorced, widowed; children growing away from you, friends dying. You imagine the loss of status, the loss of desire – and desirability. You may go further and consider your own approaching death, which, despite what company you may muster, can only be faced alone. But all this is looking ahead. What you fail to do is look ahead, and then imagine yourself looking back from the future point. Learning the new emotions that time brings. Discovering, for example, that as the witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been. Even if you have assiduously kept records – in words, sound, pictures – you may find that you have attended to the wrong kind of record-keeping. What was the line Adrian used to quote? 'History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.” ? Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
The Hero's Journey byJoseph Campbell
Joseph Campbell defined a classic sequence of actions that are found in many stories. It is also known as the Monomyth, a term Campbell coined from James Joyce's Finnigan's Wake: separation, the call to adventure, and returning home. We find ourselves separated, asleep, cut off from being fully alive. We live inside of our heads instead of our bodies, separated from the lived experience that is right here, right now. Mindfulness practice is to acknowledge this separation and accept the “call to adventure.” to explore our minds with all their imperfections: fears, doubts, a call to our dark side, our human side; it embraces adversity rather than trying to eliminate it. First, we must pay attention. Next we must be open. Then take responsibility by embracing the possibility that each moment presents. We keep coming back from exile through the very stuff of our lives–the beautiful stuff and the ugly stuff–finding value in all of it. When we become intimate with those bundles of conditioned reflexes, they start to lose their power to influence us, little by little. We cannot become liberated or awakened without going through the challenges, disappointments, and unexpected losses. The Hero’s Journey requires courage that is not the absence of fear but our willingness to move forward when that fear is gripping us. We must reach for courage to have the conversations we need to have with others and ourselves to figure out what we really want.
The images of God are many. Joseph Campbell called them “the masks of eternity.” All our names and images for God are masks, they signify that ultimate reality, which by definition transcends language and art. A myth is a mask of God, too, a metaphor for what lies behind the visible world.
There is an old story that is still good — the story of the quest, the spiritual quest, that is to say, to find the inward thing that you basically are. All of these symbols in mythology refer to you — have you been reborn? Have you died to your animal nature and come to life as a human incarnation? You are God in your deepest identity. You are one with the transcendent.
The Masks of Eternity
Modest Mussorgsky - Night on Bald Mountain (Arr. Rimsky-Korsakov)
Philip Glass - Mad Rush
J.S. Bach: Prelude 1 in C Major BWV 846 from the Well-Tempered Clavier
Antonio Vivaldi - Concerto in E minor for Bassoon, RV 484
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K503
Schubert's Schwanengesang (Swan song) D. 957.No. 4, Ständchen (Serenade) - Piano Transcription by Franz Liszt (S. 560)
