What means this recent awakening of interest, among all classes, with regard to music, art and the drama? Do these really assist one in the understanding of truth? Do they really serve and teach the soul that is struggling upward on the Path? The ancients believed so and it is significant that the most advanced souls of the present age believe the same, those who, united in a bond of holy service under the guidance of a World Teacher, are really building the matrix for the civilization of the future.
About two years ago the Leader of the Universal Brotherhood Movement founded the Isis League of Music and Drama. Its objects are:
1. To accentuate the importance of music and the drama as vital educative factors, and
2. To educate the people to a knowledge of the true philosophy of life by means of dramatic presentations of a high order and the influence of the grander harmonies of music.
This means very much more than the world dreams of or, in fact, would be willing to believe, for we are only just emerging from that interesting period of materialism when faith was considered a sign of mental weakness and skepticism a sign of mental strength.
The ancient schools of philosophy always required of their students a knowledge of music. The great mystic dramas of Ancient Greece were the synthesis, the union, of music and art in the service of philosophy. Written by philosophers, teachers and initiates, their object was always the same, "to educate the people to a knowledge of the true philosophy," to lead the drifting mass of men into some consciousness of truth.
For spiritual truths can never be expressed in exact, bare, literal words. It is impossible, as impossible as that we should put the sun itself into a bureau drawer. Spiritual truth can only be brought to the mind by symbolic presentation, of which the great symbolic drama is the highest type we know. For the symbol travels no long and devious route as do the processes of the intellect. No, once the soul is, in a measure, free, once the intuition is aroused, the spiritual truth for which the symbol stands bursts upon the soul like a flood of light. Elaborate literal "reasoning" speaks only to the mind. The symbol speaks to the soul, and the ideal, symbolic drama therefore becomes a torch bearer of the Absolute Truth itself. When we understand this, then we will faintly realize the Master purpose behind the founding of the Isis League of Music and Drama, behind the production of "The Eumenides," behind that greatest of all mystery-plays, recently produced at Point Loma, "The Travail of the Soul."
But when Greece passed the light failed for a time. The Dark Ages came, bequeathing to us, among other pleasant notions, a firm belief that the only method of gaining truth was to cultivate the intellect. And so, for centuries, we fed our children on Greek and Latin, Latin and Greek, with a sort of nightmare, called mathematics, for variety. But at last the time came when the few that somehow survived this process awakened to a realizing sense that they were souls, hungry souls, too, not a rag-bag collection of so-called "mental faculties." And they fled to those things which, of all the externals of life, alone could feed the soul—music, art and the symbolic drama.
If we stop to think, we will see that the real glimpses of truth that have come to us have come not through our thinking processes, the intellect, but through the intuition. Widen and cleanse that channel, pour into it the floods of the Infinite, and "education" will take care of itself. Then we shall travel on the Path, because we shall have become that Path itself. And it is to the intuition directly, to the soul itself, that poetry, music, art and the true drama always speak.
I once stood with a friend before a little painting of a bit of roadway near her home in the country. It was painted by an artist friend, fresh from a period of study in the Beaux Arts in Paris; and she said, "The little sketch is so pretty. I can hardly believe that it was painted from that road near the marsh. Of all places, that is uninteresting." She looked at the sketch a minute longer and then said, with a little quiver in her voice, "Strange, but the place itself will always be beautiful to me now." Love sprang up in her heart, instead of indifference, her insight was deepened, her soul was fed, and the artist had done a far greater work than she knew.
It is just because we cannot look upon nature and life with our soul eyes, that we need the painter and musician and poet. They look deeper than the surface, translating, as it were, the mystic message of nature into a language that we can read, the drama, or the sculpture or the musical composition. We get glimpses of the truth not so directly, perhaps, but these things at least place our feet upon the Path, and light us on our way. The very fact that every great work of symbolic art, whether done in paints or terms of philosophy or the music of vibrant strings, has a different message for each soul, is clear proof that at its heart and center is the Eternal Truth. For these things teach because they expand the soul. They lift us, and we verily "ascend into the hill of the Lord," that high state of consciousness where alone we can drink in the divine inflow from higher planes still.
But, you are asking, if this be true, how do you account for the fact that, in all times, some artists and dramatists have led dissipated, selfish lives?
Do not forget that all knowledge is a two-edged sword. It cuts both ways. If these things have a high aspect they have also one that is very low, and there have always been men who were willing to sell their gifts, if not for money, then for some other coin which would buy personal gratification. As a result, we have to-day the pure, symbolic drama at one pole, and the low vaudeville at the other. We have the Ninth Symphony at one pole and the sensual rhythm of the danse du ventre at the other; the Greek temple paintings at one extreme and the saloon fresco at the other. Many an artist who would not sell himself for money, does so year after year for the sake of a possible "Hors Concours" in the Salon or a paragraph in a London daily on "the latest sensation, a startling picture by so and so." It is the curse of modern art, this itching for fame, and the sin of separateness lies at the root of it all.
Yet, leaving out of the question music and art that is debasing, there is still a danger point. Under the spell of pure art we are lifted, filled, as it were, with the currents of divine life. At that point the inner motive, of which we may or may not be conscious, decides whether the ways shall go up or down.
If our motive is selfish, if we visit the theatre or concert in order that we may converse wisely about things which we do not understand, or for the sake of revelling in sensations more exquisite than those induced by the dish-pan or the milliner, be sure that we are on the edge of a chasm that may engulf us. For the spiritual currents which, at times, seem actually to flow into our souls are not to be walled up within ourselves. They must flow out to the world or they will destroy us. "Wouldst thou thus dam the waters born on Sumeru? Shalt thou divert the stream for thine own sake, or send it back to its prime source along the crests of cycles?"
It is not enough to expend this inflow of soul in a debauch of the emotions, or even in a newspaper critique or a club essay. It must flow out in the helpful, loving word and deed, compassionate service. Then we become co-workers with the Law itself.
For times and ideals have changed. The test to-day is not how much we know, but how much we love. Not how many symphonies we have analyzed and criticised and, perchance, spoiled for ourselves in doing so; not how many birds we have shot and stuffed nor how many cocoons we have torn to pieces in the name of science, nor how many beautiful butterflies we have killed and impaled on long pins and placed in glass covered coffins with other dead butterflies, all neatly labeled in Latin. Not at all. The real test is—and music and art and the drama are potent factors in lifting our consciousness to the plane where we realize it—do we love,—do we see in all life and all nature the divine, do we feel that kinship which exists between our own souls and the soul of the world, do we see on everything that exists the seal and signet of brotherhood?
As Goethe expresses it: —
"Doth not the All
Press on thy head and heart.
And weave itself around thee, visibly and invisibly
In eternal mystery?
Fill thy heart with it till it overflow,
And in the feeling when thou'rt wholly blest.
Call it what name thou wilt!
Happiness! Heart! Love! God!sI have no name for it.
Feeling is all. Name is but sound and smoke
Veiling the glow of heaven."