Today*, it is propitious to foster the vision of the destiny of Art in the new human Culture and Civilization.
We have already talked about the universal Art of Ideas and how vital it is to learn and think the True, desire the Beautiful and act the Good, in a word, to express the art of living in order to transform the self-destructive tendencies that are inherent in human separativeness.
This can be attested on a daily basis, subjectively and objectively: more and more urgently human consciousness finds itself compelled to look for and implement wise solutions to the countless eyesores, challenges and absurdities that cross us intimately and confuse us, so that we can gradually learn to direct and build knowingly and beautifully our Future.
In the current hurricane of impressions and interconnections in which we are immersed and submerged by, sometimes exciting sometimes disarming for its overwhelmingly accelerated rhythm and its apparent shallowness, how can we practice the art of discrimination and choose what is good from what is bad, what is beautiful from what is ugly, what is true from what is false?
In the first act of Macbeth by the great William Shakespeare we read:
Fair is foul, and foul is fair… (the three Witches)
So foul and fair a day I have not seen… (Macbeth)
One could say that this is the customary human situation: our mind, or rather our way of “feeling”, is “instinctively” under the spell of the witches that the King has encountered. The witches of our separative or not lofty personal sensations, emotions and thoughts wrap ourselves up in a cloud that can conceal “the splendour of Truth”, the real Beauty, the right evolutionary direction.
At this level of opinions which pertains to individual perception, everything becomes licit; the beautiful is what one likes and ugly what we do not consider suitable; the true becomes what we already know or is comforting for us; the fanatic stances are seen as concordant cooperation and value is established accordingly to what is publicly praised.
In this phase of human evolution, esoteric teachings state that all this is a consequence of the progressive development of the mental Principle (Manas), which from instinctive perception leads to all the distinguishing, differentiating and analysing in order to know that is typical of the intellect; and it will gain perfection, passing through all the necessary stages of experiencing and experimenting, in the direct knowledge of intuition and inspiration from the World of Ideas. The mastery or Wisdom of Thought is our next evolutionary goal, our destiny; despite all appearances, we will conquer
the Art of acting intelligently out of Love.
In the meantime— an interlude that may last thousands of years — the current instinctive and intellectual reactions of the majority of people prevent from choosing in the name of and according to the vision of the common/impersonal Good. The various parts or parties in turn “perceive” it at the expense of the circumscribed one pertaining to their personal interest or their own “group”, and do not glimpse the paths of investment for our and others’ elevation and expansion – past, present and future.
Fair is foul, and foul is fair– and being “moonstruck” we come to think that the absence of beauty or ugliness is not an “objective” problem or fact, but just an issue of perspective and point of view. And this might be, in a way, from the point of view of the Evolution of consciousness, which progressively and accordingly raises the scale of values on which choices are made, and yet: the evolutionary or ascending Direction of this hierarchy of values, although misconstrued for ignorance or lack of wisdom, exists and is more than objective, it is real.
The Way of the Good, the Beautiful and the True does exist, and it is one and infinite, which means that it is “here and now, everywhere and always”. It is the unceasing will for harmony that brings forward the universe and its evolution.
According to esoteric Philosophy, every monad (“centre of consciousness”) or point in Space, from the atomic level to the universal one, is in its essence an infinite entity of such a Direction and Reality: each of us is potentially the Way, the Truth and the Life towards Harmony.
When this wise and impersonal ‘part’, or rather unity, becomes predominant in us ever more in depth and width, we can or know how to see, hear and think the good, the beautiful and the true; just as we know that “the goodness of the tree is recognized by its fruits” and that only if the fruits are good “the end justifies the means”. This is the real why a tree or a humanity exists for: to love intelligently, to nourish, renew, beautify, enrich and perfume Space – as much relentlessly as rhythmically.
The Art of living serves therefore the authentic Direction of Beauty, of what serves evolution towards a common Good, towards a spiritual Truth that produces fruits or “beneficial” accomplishments, perhaps not short-range or short-term but at full range and to an infinite term: not according to ‘a point of view’, but to a spherical, spatial, helical vision.
Who is capable of such a vision and responsibility in feeling?
Someone, few, more and more people: this is the story of the expansion of human consciousness and of initiation, whose roots go way back into the dawn of time and which stands in the splendour of the eternal present of inner, spiritual, occult accomplishments. It is the victory of the Beauty of Being, celebrated by all the sacred Traditions and by the perfect feeling and trust of the common Heart.
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In the meantime, let us therefore practice and strengthen the vision of Beautyand of that evolutionary Plan which will bring it to a beneficial fulfilment. Today*, let us exercise the vision of its direct reflection in human Art, “the only vital means of the new Culture”.
What is the next evolutionary step?
Beyond the nostalgic déjà-vu unable to keep up with the times, or the license and the uncontrolled expressiveness of individual ‘feeling’, what manifestation of Beauty will fall from the World of Ideas and emerge from this central and crucial sector of human Activity? What works of art will thaw and move hearts, flooding them with heroic ardour?
Here is a great attempt to trace the features of the new Art**:
If the last century (from 1921 to 1980) saw the “End of the old schools. Vanguard. Disorderly researches. Confusion and decadence of Art”, now we are living (from 1980 to 2040): “New artistic movements. Return, slowly and among many resistances, to the study of harmony and proportions. Man resumes to think that beauty is not just a subjective matter, but it has rules and discipline”.
And then (from 2040 to 2100) here is what should be favoured and fostered: “The first expressions of a mental art. The structure of thought is studied. It is recognized that the work of art is not born out of the emotional plane, but has roots in mind, that is to say it derives, like all other human expressions, from the infinite realm of psychic geometry. Therefore, the study of the power of symmetry is resumed”.
(2100-2160): “The artistic manifestations take up again a classic aspect. They are rigorous yet not cold. They are alive, and their usefulness for general well-being is recognized. The International Institute of the Heart is born, teaching the rules of harmony and investigating in the field of proportions, numbers, sounds and lights”.
(2160-2220): “We learn to project well-constructed thought-forms. Art gradually shifts from external to internal planes. This marks its communion with the Supermundane, from which it draws inspiration and mastery”.
(2220-2280): “Thought-forms are launched for the common Good. Beauty is recognized as an exact science, and any scientific knowledge becomes beautiful. It is also used as a powerful weapon that dissolves darkness and malice. The fourth field [of Art] takes on magical and creative qualities”.
(2280-2340): “A unitary Art is affirmed, although diverse according to the ethnic groups and their cultures. Elements of all the arts of the past will be found there. Heaven, which recalls everything, expresses in this way the fulfilment, through man, that represents it”.
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Heaven, which recalls everything, expresses in this way the fulfilment, through man, that represents it.
In this Seventh Solar Day (1910-2750), and especially in its very close sub-cycle that will see the ‘resurgence’ of the Fourth Human Ray (from 2025), we must therefore love and nurture especially the Vision of an Art that is able to express the higher Order and Beauty:
“The ray of beauty, of art and harmony is the producer of the quality of organisation through form. It is in the last analysis the ray of mathematical exactitude and is not the ray of the artist, as so many seem to think… The fourth ray is essentially the refiner, the producer of perfection within the form, and the prime manipulator of the energies of God in such a way that the Temple of the Lord is indeed known in its true nature as that which “houses” the Light” (A. A. Bailey, Esoteric Psychology I, 49-51)
… the Ray of Harmony or Beauty– harmony through control, that control entailing the knowledge of wisdom. It is the harmony of similarity; it is the equilibrising of all through the realisation of the laws of magnetism that produce the co-ordination of the many diverse into the one homogeneous; magnetism governs the synthesis of the many aspects into a form of unity. (A. A. Bailey, A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, 585)
This fourth ray is, in the last analysis, the ray which teaches the art of living in order to produce a synthesis of beauty. There is no beauty without unity, without embodied idealism and the resultant symmetrical unfoldment. This ray is not the ray of art, as it is often claimed, but is the energy which brings about the beauty of those living forms which embody the ideas and the ideals which are seeking immediate expression…” (A. A. Bailey, The Destiny of the Nations, 142)
Nice work on the 4th ray and its spiritual importance and timing. Is the “cyclic study of the sixth Epoch” available for others to study?
Dear Duane, it is an unpublished text, and still in Italian, but if you find a translator, it is available. It is really brilliant and revelatory.