The Arts, Music and Yoga

If you want art to be the true and highest art, it must be the expresison of a divine world brought down into this material world.  All true artists have some feeling of this kind, some sense that they are intermediaries between a higher world and this physical existence.  If you consider it in this light, Art is not very different from Yoga. Art is nothing less in its fundamental truth than the aspect of beauty of the divine manifestation.  Perhpas, looking from this standpoint, there weill be found very few true artists; but still there are some and these can very well be considered as Yogis.  For like a Yogi an artist goes into deep contemplation to await and receive his inpspiration.  To create something truly beautiful, he has first to see it within, to realise it as a whole in his inner consciousness. The role of music lies in helping the consciousness to uplift itself towards the spiritual heights.  All that lowers the consciousness, encourages desires and excites the passions, runs counter to the true goal of music and ought to be avoided. [The Mother, from On Music]