We all remember Prince Myshkin’s famous phrase, “Beauty will save the world”, from Dostoevsky’s equally famous novel, The Idiot.
We also know that culture, at least Western culture, has been permeated, since Plato, by the search for the meaning, the significance and the function of Beauty.
We recognise in Beauty, in all its forms, the capacity, I would say the power, to elevate human consciousness, to inspire it, to connect it with the Absolute, just as the Teaching asserts: “In Beauty the Infinite will manifest.” (1)
Beauty can also stand as a safeguard of the best human qualities, acting as a shield against the advance of chaos, disintegration and cultural and moral barbarism.
We also see in Beauty a regenerating and healing power, a power capable of transfiguring what is “sick” in us and in society, restoring it intact and immaculate.
The idea that the beauty we see in the world is merely a partial and distorted reflection of ideal Beauty is a concept that dates back to Plato and is well summarised in these words, which show the cosmos shining with beauty and capable of radiating just as much light, in turn serving as a Model for all works and behaviour: “The supersubstantial Beautiful is called Beauty because of the beauty that it bestows on all beings according to each one’s measure; which, as the cause of the harmony and splendour of all things, casts upon all, like light, the effusions that make beautiful through its springing ray, calls all things to itself – whence it is also called Beauty – and gathers into itself all things in everything.” (2)
The links between Beauty, Truth and Goodness had also been explained by philosophers for centuries, although the path that saw Beauty rise to “transcendental” status (3) was neither linear nor immediate, just as the intertwining of Beauty with the One was recognised; these statements imply that Unity, Truth, Goodness and Beauty are inherent properties of Being and therefore, on a metaphysical level, everything that exists is, in its intrinsic nature, one, true, good and beautiful, a visible image of the perfect but unfathomable Beauty of the Creator.
And it is Hugh of Saint Victor who provides us with a synthesis of this concept, stating that “visible beauty is the image of invisible beauty”. (4)
Starting from this point, we can introduce today’s reflection, a reflection that originates precisely from the concepts of ‘visible beauty’ and ‘invisible beauty’.
The former requires awareness of the myriad beautiful, elegant, proportionate and harmonious forms that surround us, forms that we can learn to recognise, appreciate and reproduce, making their beauty visible. These forms are not only concrete and ‘artistic’ but also appear in the form of attitudes, feelings, thoughts and projects, giving us a measure of the creative and harmonious potential inherent in Humanity.
This ‘Beauty’ certainly plays an important role in the ‘salvation of the world’, not least because it elevates human consciousnesses and leads them to the place from which Beauty itself springs.
From that place, which Plato called the World of Ideas and Plotinus celebrated as the dwelling place of the splendour of Being, radiates the ‘invisible beauty’ that urges us, therefore, not only to see and ‘enjoy’ beautiful forms, but to contemplate and thus ‘understand’ the light that this Beauty emanates.
The Teaching states in this regard that ‘it is not quite right to say, “Beauty will save the world”; it is more precise to say, “Awareness of beauty will save the world”.’ (5)
And furthermore: “Whosoever proclaims Beauty shall be saved.” (6)
Awareness is the first step towards comprehension and understanding Beauty requires a “change of course” in consciousness, it demands daily striving towards the invisible and the transcendent, it requires that man’s creative power be activated and directed towards goals of harmony, order, proportion and measure, which are fundamental components of Beauty.
The term ‘comprehension’ encapsulates the secret of this anagogical process in that it concerns the meanings of ‘taking’, ‘binding’, ‘seizing’ but also ‘conceiving’ and ‘surprising’; the word, therefore, aims to highlight not only the ability to grasp a subject or fact in its entirety, but also to carry out that work of reuniting multiple elements that is characteristic of the mind when it is well oriented, ‘firm in the light’ and striving towards ‘the highest of heavens’. (7)
The ‘understanding’ required to grasp invisible Beauty is deeper, more complete and more penetrating than that needed to appreciate beauty in forms. It is an intuitive, immediate, dazzling understanding, capable of seizing the evolutionary Law tending towards perfect harmony that underlies and sustains all creation, serving as an imperishable Model for all forms.
Beauty is therefore the ‘rule of Art’ in the cosmos, that thread that connects high and low, spirit and matter, Model and formal ‘copy’; to access it, as Plato rightly argued, it is necessary to climb, guided by the light of understanding, first rational and then intuitive, the ladder that leads to the World of Causes. Finally, understanding Beauty means reaching the origin of the creative act, which, in turn, allows us to immerse ourselves in the essence of Manifestation.
Without a doubt, Art, in all its expressions, is the promoter of these achievements, as this sutra from Agni Yoga confirms. “The pledge of happiness for humanity lies in beauty. Hence, We assert art to be the highest stimulus for the regeneration of the spirit. We consider art to be immortal and boundless. We make a demarcation between knowledge and science, because knowledge is art, science is method. Therefore, the element of Fire intensifies art and spirit-creativeness. Therefore, the wondrous pearls of art can actually uplift and transmute the spirit instantaneously. Everything is attainable through the growth of the spirit, for only the inner fires can give the needed strength of receptivity. Thus an Agni Yogi can sense all cosmic beauty without narrow scientific methodology. Verily, the pearls of art bring exaltation to humanity, and the fires of spirit-creativeness give a new understanding of beauty to humanity. Thus, We value integrity around the center and appreciate the Service to Hierarchy through the heart.” (8)
We must not forget that understanding Beauty also means knowing how to see all that is beautiful in every expression of human life, in science and philosophy, in politics and in every other work, since the ‘seal’ of beauty is engraved in the very acts of man who, ‘with his hands and feet’, shapes reality according to the radiant principles of the Invisible Light that dwells within him. “The miracle of Beauty in the adornment of our daily lives – Agni Yoga reminds us – will exalt mankind.” (9)
Beauty is forged through Light and therefore requires the light of the mind (concrete and intuitive) to fully understand the constructive power of its principles.
These principles (harmony, proportion, measure, balance, grace…) are therefore revealed in the light of reason and are transfigured by the power of intuition, so that the understanding of Beauty can be configured as a ‘peak experience’, those summits that the wise Diotima had already indicated as the highest human achievement, namely the glimpse of “wondrous beauty … a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning; secondly, not beautiful in one point of view and foul in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one place fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as if fair to some and foul to others… but beauty absolute, separate simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase or any change is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things. (10)
A concept that we also find in the Sanskrit text Sahitya Darpana: “Pure aesthetic experience … is known intuitively, in an intellectual ecstasy unaccompanied by ideation, at the highest level of conscious being; twin of the vision of God, its life is like a flash of dazzling light of transcendent origin, impossible to analyse, yet in the image of our own being.” (11)
This dazzling light, which can flood our minds from the summit of the Spirit, tearing through the heavy veil of ignorance and misunderstanding, is never separated from the lights that the Luminaries radiate incessantly in Space.
Today, according to the heliocentric perspective, the Masters of Love, Jupiter, and Harmony, Mercury, unite their splendour and magnetise the waters of Cancer, where forms, made perfect by the relentless constructive work of the Sign, become the ‘illuminated dwelling’ of beauty.
And it is from the vastness of the heavens that “… divine Love and the Harmony of Space integrate to bless the earthly environment, which the horizon encloses without limiting, and at whose centre beats a human heart” (12), an image of the beating Heart that burns with Beauty at the centre of the cosmos.
Artists are often better able to ‘understand’ the ‘heart’ of Beauty, capable of penetrating that ‘mystery’ which at first glance seems immeasurable and impossible to enclose in a form but which then, by virtue of the light of ‘understanding’ that clears up minds and consciousnesses, is poured into a work of art. “And it is precisely the supreme beauty of the cosmic order that recomposes, constitutes and encapsulates the vital core of every authentic work of art.” (13)
Act not out of desire for reward or from fear,
but because you are conscious of cosmic beauty.
(Illumination § 274)
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1 Agni Yoga Series, Leaves of Morya’s Garden II – Illumination § 322
2 Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, De divinis nominibus (in: Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages)
3 Medieval philosophy considered the “Transcendentals” (One, True, Good and Beautiful) as “convertible” in that there is no real distinction between them (secondum rem), but only “of reason”. The Transcendentals are those terms or general properties of Being that transcend all Categories (according to Aristotle’s codification, the Categories divide being into 10 classes or genera without common elements). In 1250, St Bonaventure published a pamphlet in which he explicitly listed the four conditions of Being, namely unum, verum, bonum and pulchrum, explaining their convertibility. The pamphlet also highlights the distinction between the Transcendentals, explaining that the One concerns the efficient Cause, the True the formal Cause, the Good the final Cause, while the Beautiful concerns every Cause in general.
4 Hugh of Saint Victor, Hierarchiam coelestem expositio (in: U. Eco, op. cit.)
5 Agni Yoga Series, New Era – Community § 27
6 Agni Yoga Series, Leaves of Morya’s Garden I – The Call § 199
7 In the Lambdoma Synthesis the definition of Understanding is: Understanding is the unifying work of the mind. (Goal 5.6)
8 Agni Yoga Series, Hierarchy § 359
9 Agni Yoga Series, Leaves of Morya’s Garden I – The Call § 45
10 Plato, Symposium, 211a-b
11 Quoted in: Piero Ferrucci, Esperienze delle vette
12 E. Savoini, The solar System in Space, only available in Italian
13 From an interview to Karlheinz Stockhausen, in: P. Ferrucci, op. cit.
Splendid! Thank you.