MY REFERENCE TO art in this book is to all the arts, and not only to painting and sculpture. Schubert's song in praise of music begins with the words, "Thou glorious art! (Du holde kunst!)" It is in this spirit that I use the word, "art," here. My reference is to any esthetic medium that can carry the mind beyond the mechanics of mere craftsmanship to the experience of inner feelings and higher states of consciousness.
In response to a previous book of mine, in which I expressed some of these ideas, Steven Halpern (the well-known New Age musician and composer) wrote me to say that while he liked my concepts, he took exception to my consistent use of the masculine pronoun. On principle, I agreed with him, and tried to follow his suggestion in the writing of this book. For I hold no bias on this issue. Certainly, greatness in the arts transcends sexual differences. Moreover, you will see as you read these pages that I emphasize the importance to clear understanding of the feeling quality, and the importance of art to the development of our feeling faculty. Women, more often than men, understand the importance of feeling especially of intuitive feeling.
I HAVE KNOWN J. Donald Walters [Swami Kriyananda) in several contexts for many years. First, I've known him as a gifted, and I will even say inspired, composer. I recorded The Mystic Harp, an album of his most poetic musical compositions, in 1995. What strikes me above all about Donald is the all-em-bracing nature of his mind, which is probably the result of his incredible capacity for concentration. He has an ability to uncover countless unusual aspects ects of a subject, and to reveal them in an unexpected and original light. When he turns the spotlight of his concentration on any given subject, he leaves no aspect of it uncovered.
I have also known Donald for many years as one of the few still-living direct, full-time disciples of the great Paramhansa Yogananda, author of the now famous Autobiography of a Yogi. I myself consider that Yogananda was one of the most important beings to incarnate on this planet in many centuries. I've been familiar with his work since 1962, and have been aware of Donald, as his disciple, for most of that time.
It was not until about 1989, however, that I spotted Donald's masterly autobiography, The Path, in a London bookshop. After reading it, I decided at last to get in touch with him. We corresponded, and I subsequently read a fair cross-section of his books, heard some of his tapes, and watched a few of his videos. I also visited Ananda several times, the beautiful village Walters himself founded in 1968. There I learned from him and his followers as much about Yogananda as I could. In 1995 I offered to record some of Walters's music, both because I loved it, and for the sake of completeness of returning with gratitude what I had gained.
In Donald's books it has become obvious to me that he asked his master, Yogananda, more interesting questions than anyone else, and that Yogananda, consequently, gave out many of his most interesting ideas to this disciple. The exchange between them has become, subsequently, a gift to us all! Another thing has become obvious to me in reading Donald's writings, and that is his unbiased discrimination. Unfailingly, he makes it crystal clear, for example, as to when, on any given subject, he is expressing his own ideas and when he is stating what Yogananda said. Such perfect fairness is, I believe, not at all usual.
WHEN YOU LOOK at a lake, what do you notice? the broad expanse of water? the ripples on the surface? the beaches and trees? the people boating, fishing, or swimming?
A biologist examining the same water under a micro-scope sees something altogether different: a teeming world of microbes, invisible to the naked eye. And if a physicist submits the same water to scientific analysis, his focus will be even more minute. He will speak of shining electrons and whirling atoms: miniature planetary systems, surrounded by as much space, relatively speaking, as the empty reaches of our galaxy.
There are many ways of viewing any subject. The broad view is often scoffed at by specialists, to whom it seems too imprecise. Broad statements on the arts face the same criticism. Indeed, a broad view of art demands that one soar high above the twisted jungle of "isms." To this view, the various schools of art emphasize matters of merely passing interest. What count, here, are the farranging concepts on which art rests. Indeed, the broad view demands that one transcend art itself and view it in the general context of humankind.
For art is an expression of human nature. It touches on human values, and cannot really be understood independently of those values.
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