"In the present age man is more and more compelled to bring about order, stability, peace and harmony by means of external laws, decrees or institutions... However much study may be devoted to the elimination of crime and wrong-doing in the world, true redemption, the turning of evil into good, will in future depend upon whether true art and architecture are able to generate a definite cultural atmosphere, an atmosphere that can so fill the hearts and souls of human beings." Rudolf Steiner
Those to whom nature begins to disclose her open mystery feel an irresistible longing for her orthiest interpreter, Art. Goethe
Art is the creation of organs though which the gods are able to speak to humanity. Rudolf Steiner
Nature’s ancient communion with the spiritual life of man; a spirit that arises from the sublime consciousness of striving toward the infinite, of grasping all that is revealed to us amid the boundless and inexhaustible fullness of creation, development, and being.
The study of nature as a kind of escape, to a zone of freedom where local discords are ultimately resolved into harmony; an intellectual delight, a freedom that strengthens us against the blows of destiny, and which no external power could possible destroy; and the knowledge that results from the free action of thought is at once the delight and the indestructible prerogative of man. Alexander von Humboldt, Essay on the Geography of Plants that he dedicated to Goethe
Goethe: The Tragedy of Faust & The Alchemical Journey
What is the color of a world that gives rise to colossal ideas? What does it smell like? It is stuffy in Faust’s world: earthshaking plans are born in the cramped space where he scurries about. He is a thinker, a mouthpiece for ideas, a transmitter of words, a schemer, a daydreamer. An anonymous man driven by simple instincts: hunger, greed, lust. An unhappy, hounded creature that issues a challenge to Goethe’s Faust. Why stay in the moment if one can go further ? Further and further, pressing forward – not noticing that time stands still. And you shall pass, too. Like the sage warning students to abandon siddhis (super normal powers) if they wish to experience enlightenment, Goethe's life followed a similar path. He practiced the magic of alchemy in his youth which led to power over women and success in his creative career. At the end, he learned to let go of his heightened Olympian status and became more humble in order to experience wisdom and more Light. Devastated, Faust sees that Mephistopheles' promise of pleasure brought him only despair, and cries out: "Not yet have I my liberty made good: / If I could banish Magic's fell creations, / And totally unlearn the incantations,—" The magic spells and incantations that brought him pleasure and power did not satisfy his soul. Faust found that only by helping others (draining a swamp for better sewage in the community) gave him a feeling of bliss: "Yes! to this thought I hold with firm persistence: / The last result of wisdom stamps it true: / He only earns his freedom and existence, / Who daily conquers them anew."
Goethe defies both ordinary experience and literary tradition that that a man once sold to the Evil One is hopelessly lost. He not only raises his hero from the degradation of sin to a virtuous life on earth, but the possibility of breaking away from sin and rising from its lowest depths to serene heights of virtue ; finally, he has pictured in symbolic language that ideal life. Goethe does not dogmatize ; he even scarcely moralizes. He only bids us take courage and cease to despair over mere appearance ; he speaks the consolatory word, " All things transitory But as symbols are sent." In conclusion, the poet almost gives us a glimpse through the outer shell of symbol into that bright sphere of Reality, where "Earth's insufficiency Here grows to Event".
The genius of Poetry (Apollo) is removing the veils which cover a statue of Nature, shown as the goddess Artemis of Ephesus
“I want to persuade you that beauty matters – that is it not just a subjective thing but a universal need of human beings. If we ignore this need, we find ourselves in a spiritual desert. I want to show you the path out of that desert. It is a path that leads to home.” Roger Scruton
Painting of Padmapani from Ajanta Caves
The philosophy of aesthetics was closely related to thoughts contained in the Upanishads. It was believed that the ecstasy experienced on seeing something truly beautiful, whether in nature or in art, is akin to Brahmananda or eternal bliss. It was believed that the moment of the experience of beauty was one in which the veils of illusion were lifted and one was able to see one's own intrinsic unity with the whole of creation. It is a view of the world that sees a harmony in the whole of creation. It sees the same that is in each of us, in the animals, the flowers, the trees, the leaves and even in the breeze that moves the leaves. All that there is, is seen to be a reflection of the One. The phenomenal world of separated beings and objects seen around us is an illusion, perceived and brought to us by our senses. The primary illusion is the perception of ourselves as individual entities, which leads us on a path of egoic existence. On this path, we are distanced from the truth. The high purpose in life is to seek reintegration with the One, to perceive ourselves as part of the beauty of the One, the Divine. To see oneself as a part of the divinity of existence. And thereby to lose the pain of a life caught in the web of endless desires. Benoy K Behl
Hindu philosophers tell us that the soul of a person who has attained liberation from the cycle of re-birth unites with God. The soul has often been termed the God within each of us.
Liberation I have thrown from me the whirling dance of mind And stand now in the spirit's silence free, Timeless and deathless beyond creature-kind, The center of my own eternity. I have escaped and the small self is dead; I am immortal, alone, ineffable; I have gone out from the universe I made, And have grown nameless and immeasurable. My mind is hushed in a wide and endless light, My heart a solitude of delight and peace, My sense unsnared by touch and sound and sight, My body a point in white infinities. I am the one Being's sole immobile Bliss: No one I am, I who am all that is. Sri Aurobindo
My mind, my soul grow larger than all Space; Time founders in that vastness glad and nude: The body fades, an outline, a dim trace, A memory in the spirit's solitude. This universe is a vanishing circumstance In the glory of a white infinity, Beautiful and bare for the Immortal's dance, House-room of my immense felicity. In the thrilled happy giant void within Thought lost in light and passion drowned in bliss, Changing into a stillness hyaline, Obey the edict of the Eternal's peace. Life's now the Ineffable's dominion; Nature is ended and the spirit alone.
Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol by Sri Aurobindo There is the Spirit, the Source of creation. But in creating a universe, it withdrew Its spiritual properties (of Delight, Knowledge, Oneness, etc.). Savitri arose to bring that Divinity of the Pure Existent into the world, into the lives of men. She will do this by overcoming the limitations that exist in life, including the essential Ignorance, division, duality, conflict, pain, etc. born of creation, through her inner, spiritual quest.
King Aswapathy represents human aspiration for the realization of a divine life. Savitri, his daughter, and the eventual incarnation of the Divine Mother, is here to fulfill Aswapathy's and the world's aspiration for its own transformation and fulfillment. Satyavan represent the soul of the world and Man. Through Savitri's quest she will overcome the limitations of life, lift up the soul of the earth, as symbolized by the soul of Satyavan whom she loves.
Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol by Sri Aurobindo
John Keats
As to the poetical Character itself...has no self – it is every thing and nothing – It has no character – it enjoys light and shade;... What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation. A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity – he is continually in for – and filling some other Body – The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute – the poet has none; no identity – he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's Creatures. John Keats
The Mother (Mira Alfassa)
As soon as all effort disappears from a manifestation, it becomes very simple, with the simplicity of a flower opening, manifesting its beauty and spreading its fragrance without clamour or vehement gesture. And in this simplicity lies the greatest power, the power which is least mixed and least gives rise to harmful reactions. Simplicity, simplicity! How sweet is the purity of Thy Presence! A joyful spontaneity; in action, in expression, in movement, in life, be simple, be simple, be simple. The Mother (Mira Alfassa)
A command rings out within me: "Dig! What do you see?" "Men and birds, water and stones." "Dig deeper! What do you see?" "Ideas and dreams, fantasies and lightening flashes!" "Dig deeper! What do you see?" "I see nothing! A mute Night, as thick as death. It must be death." "Dig deeper!" "Ah! I cannot penetrate the dark partition! I hear voices and weeping. I hear the flutter of wings on the other shore." "Don't weep! Don't weep! They are not on the other shore. The voices, the weeping, and the wings are YOUR OWN HEART." Askitiki by Nikos Kazantzakis
Askitiki by Nikos Kazantzakis
As imaginative children personify the sounds they hear, so the men and women of an early time personified everything that lived or moved or gave any sign of life. They filled the earth, air, and sea with imaginary beings who had power over the elements and affected the lives of men. There were nymphs in the sea, dryads in the trees, kindly or destructive spirits in the air, household gods who watched over the home, and greater gods who managed the affairs of the world. They saw the world with their imaginations quite as much as with their eyes, and as they put persons behind every kind and form of life, they told stories about the world instead of making accurate and matter-of-fact reports of it...To the Norseman, as to the Greek, the Roman, the Hindu and other primitive peoples, the world was the scene of a great struggle, the stage on which gods, demons, and heroes were contending for supremacy; and they told that story in a thousand different ways. Every myth is a chapter in that story, and differs from other stories and legends because it is an explanation of something that happened in earth, sea, or sky...Children! when you see the lily on the waters, take it in your hands and hold it to the skies, that it may be happy on earth, as its two sisters, the morning and evening stars, are happy in heaven. Myths Every Child Should Know
Pictures at an Exhibition - Modest Mussorgsky
Pictures at an Exhibition - Modest Mussorgsky Mussorgsky based his musical material on drawings and watercolours by Viktor Hartmann. Mussorgsky poured out his feeling about his friend’s death (at age of 39) in a letter to Stassov :"This is how the wise usually console us blockheads, in such cases; 'He is no more, but what he has done lives and will live'…Away with such wisdom! When 'he' has not lived in vain, but has created - one must be a rascal to revel in the comforting thought that 'he' can create no more. No, one cannot and must not be comforted, there can be and must be no consolation - it is a rotten morality!"
Mussorgsky links the suite's movements in a way that depicts the viewer's own progress through the exhibition. Two "Promenade" movements stand as portals to the suite's main sections. Their regular pace and irregular meter depicts the act of walking. Three untitled interludes present shorter statements of this theme, varying the mood, colour and key in each to suggest reflection on a work just seen or anticipation of a new work glimpsed. A turn is taken in the work at the "Catacombae" when the Promenade theme stops functioning as merely a linking device and becomes, in "Cum mortuis", an integral element of the movement itself. The theme reaches its apotheosis in the suite's finale, The Bogatyr Gates.
According to the ancient superstition, "Death" appears at midnight every year on Halloween. Death has the power to call forth the dead from their graves to dance for him while he plays his fiddle. His skeletons dance for him until the first break of dawn, when they must return to their graves until the next year. A symphonic poem is a form in which musical ideas follow a narrative, emotional structure.
Zig, zig, zig, on his violin. The winter wind blows and the night is dark; Moans are heard in the linden-trees. Through the gloom, white skeletons pass,
Camille Saint-Saëns - Danse Macabre
Rumi says, "Enter the circle of lovers and find yourself in the midst of paradise. Do not wait until the day of judgment; sit happily in front of each other now, look with Love and affection at each other and say peace be with you. This is paradise."
In Persian poetry, as in all good poetry of the world, Love is the greatest circle of attraction and affection, with no one left out of the circle. Love celebrates the meaning and the substance rather than the form and modes, which are but shadows. The word nafs, which means soul and self at the same time, has been defined as a substance that loves, that desires, that wishes. If you are asked who you are, you can reply: I am Love; I love, therefore I am. Hossein Elahi Ghomshei
Seek the names no more But be in pursuit of the named Find the moon in the sky Rather than in the ponds and brooks. Rumi
Tchaikovsky - Romeo und Julia, Fantasy-Overture Tchaikovsky's yearning love theme and clear and imaginative orchestration of the fight music, the agitated theme of the warring Capulets and Montagues, including a reference to the sword fight, depicted by crashing cymbals, is one of the greatest melodies ever written
Ereignis, the opening of the Open, that in connection with things that arise and appear 'into their own', to where one belongs, "things coming into themselves by belonging together." Ereignis is the realm in which the truth of Being is manifest, when Being reaches its purity and perfection, vibrating within itself through which man and Being reach each other in their nature.
“Man, in the most hidden ground of his being, truly is only when in his own way he is like the rose—without why.” Heidegger
“My piano is the repository of all that stirred my nature in the impassioned days of my youth,” “I confided to it all my desires, my dreams, my sorrows. Its strings vibrated to my emotions, and its keys obeyed my every caprice.” Franz Liszt
"We make so many bad decisions in the world because of local and parochial thinking. Come to the window with me and do a hundred orbits of the world and you will behave differently.” Chris Hadfield. You Are Here. Hoping your day is going okay.
If we believe in an ethical society then we must find a way to free ourselves from the chains of causality and let freewill shoulder part of the blame particularly when wrongful events occur. Societal norms are breaking, intellectual frameworks are deforming, and our relationship with nature is being completely re-defined. We must use all our faculties, even those that go beyond reason, to find solutions for complex problems of our time. My friend is busy doing regression of fools He counts the peas in his empty plate Peas and beans do not correlate this late By night, forget this arithmetic of ghouls Follow the geometry of the moon and integrate. Mory Ghomshei- Fuzzy Logic in a Postmodern Era
Charles-Valentin Alkan- Barcarolle, Op. 65 No. 6. "My situation makes me horridly sad and wretched. Even musical production has lost its attraction for me for I can't see the point or goal." (spirit of anomie)
Mory Ghomshei- Fuzzy Logic in a Postmodern Era
Franz Liszt - Mephisto Waltz No. 1
Max Bruch - Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor Intense, heart-breaking, exuberant themes, woven delicately within soulful orchestral accompaniment.
Frédéric Chopin: Étude Op. 25, No. 11 "Winter Wind" A study for developing stamina, dexterity, and technique navigated with polyphonic (consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody) mindset, treating both hands as separate melodies that work together, in a duet for one performer.
Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto no.5 op.103, (Egyptian) commenced in Luxor, completed in Cairo, reflecting 'the joy of a sea voyage'
