CREATIVE ART AND
YOGA-SADHANA
K. S. VENKATARAMANI
[K. S. Venkataramani was
one of the distinguished contributors to “Triveni” right from the beginning. He
was an established writer having about 20 books, in English, Tamil, Sanskrit and
Hindi, to his credit. This article is reproduced from his book “The Nature of
Creative Art” which was reprinted by the K. S. V. Birth Centenary Celebration
Committee.” – Editor]
What is Yoga? What is
Sadhana?
Yoga is self-realisation
or God-realisation; the union of the Jeevatma with Paramatma.
Sadhana is, in the words
of one of the greatest saints and Advaitins of India, Swami Sivanandaji of
Ananda Kutir, Rishikesh, “Sadhana is any practice to steady the wandering mind
and fix it on God.”
If the fundamental longings
of the human mind on the higher level be the basis for the evaluation of all
the true values of life and art, the only test then of all literature and life
and creative art is that it must function and serve as Yoga-Sadhana.
Self-expression both in thought and deed must be so attuned as to lead you to
self-realisation, to the footstool of God.
One, with the altitude or
bent of mind seeking devoutly this Yoga-Sadhana mode in the determination of
his activities, is a Rasika. A Rasika is the only nursery from which sprouts
both the Yogi and the creative artist. A true Rasika furnishes the tilled and
prepared soil from which alone could sprout the delicate seed of Divinity, now
imprisoned in the Kundalini or the serpent-coil of man, which sums up the cosmic
energy of all life.
Does the creative artist
always require a mundane medium for his self-expression? He does require it in
the lower altitudes of life. But a Jeevanmukta does not require any medium at
all.
The saint without even a
cadjan leaf or a pamphlet to his credit is as much a creative artist as
Kalidasa or Shakespeare. His medium of expression is his own Tejas or
self-effulgence, like sunshine from the sun, spreading peace and tranquility.
For, the Jeevanmukta has mastered the rhythm of life and is one with the
pulse-beats of the universe and he is the greatest creative artist; for he has
attained the final goal of both life and art.
Sincerity is the base of
Yoga, Sincerity like the spring in a sandy bed clears automatically the grains of
sand that choke its own throat and slowly but surely the initial struggling
ooze becomes a marvellous perennial flow in due time by God’s grace. Unattached
sincere work is the purest joy on earth like spring-water.
Silence and sound, how are
they related to each other? Like the river and the sea? Speech is
self-expression and silence is self-realisation – silence that forgets the
objective environment. True speech is Yoga-Sadhana to silence and true silence
is Yoga-Sadhana to speech. Unless so based, speech leads to vanity and egoism
and commercial waste and the chaos of plenty as in m0dern ways of life and
hinders self-realisation.
In any true view of great
art there is no audience except the artist himself. A master craftsman in his
infinite absorption in his work, in his highest and loneliest hours of
communion, never thinks of the audience. There is a complete annihilation of
duality, in the transcendental joy of swa-anubhavo, or self-experience
and self-expression. The artist’s soul is the audience as well as the auditor.
Auditor and audience merge into one, in the God-intoxicated, inspired artist.
Matter and form become one. Sound and sense become one, even as Kalidasa
formulates the basic rule of literature and art in the opening stanza of Raghuvamsa.
If these great conditions of art are not satisfied, the result is not
creative art or literature, but mere commercial production, coming at its best
under De Quincey’s classification of “literature of knowledge” and not of
power.
Literary composition, all
great art indeed, is one of the authentic modes of self-realization, releasing
and subliming the flow of mind energy in rhythmic patterns, thus infusing
greater tranquility in human affairs. Art needs no ritual or ceremony but a
profound sincerity of thought and feeling that detaches the gross body at the
golden end of the pen and liberates the inner spirit of man to survey and
comprehend to the full, and to compose the endless diversities and conflicts of
life in this mysterious universe.
The great South Indian
Sanskrit poet and statesman and Advaiti, Neelakanta Deekshitar’s definition of
the nature of creative art is the best to my mind and is quite in keeping with
our own authentic traditions of art and life, always inseparable.
He says that “Kavitha
itself is a Yoga-Sadhna.” Self-expression in art is an authentic mode of
self-realization – a Yoga that transforms the mind energy into its higher forms
till Ananda is realized, a state where work is still dynamic but rhythmic,
where the mind loses its lower accents and tones and acquires the higher. The
restless, the predatory, the acquisitive and the selfish instinct, of the mind
are transformed into the peaceful, the non-predatory, non-acquisitive and
selfless spontaneities of the soul and usher in a state and a society where the
policeman is the individual.
Art conceived and executed
as Yoga-Sadhana and not as shapely products for the gains of commerce, kills
the Asura qualities in man and liberates the imprisoned Atma Gunas as outlined
in the Bhagavat Gita, thus slowly transforming the human into the divine in the
ever-ascending spiral of human consciousness.
Art as Yoga destroys the
quality that erects the conflicting barriers and limitations of life and
enables you to see the unity in diversity, the oneness of all life from amoeba
to man. This “vision splendid” is reached only when the restless and unsteady
mind is slowly sublimated through rhythm, through the immersion of the mind in
the beatitude of Nada-Brahmam or rhythmic sound.
Pray, remember that sound
is the first-born of creation and rhythm the first-born of sound. Music is the
grand-child of rhythm. Rhythm is the corner-stone of cosmic life. Rhythm is the
mother of peace and tranquility and of dynamic, selfless work, Nishkamya
Karma. Rhythm is the root source of all matter constructive energy which,
in the Leela or play of creation, interlocks itself into a rhythmic
pattern as the till now impregnable fortress of the atom and the molecule, the
vivid crystallization of energy into matter. Science, in the innocence of its
ignorance of the true cosmic process, is seeking light and knowledge by the
back staircase, knowledge of creation through destruction. And the politician
soaked in power-politics releases through the scientist this imprisoned energy
in the atom through the wrong way, imperiling the happiness of mankind and the
peace of the world.
Flood water, if canalized,
irrigates; otherwise it inundates and destroys. Atomic energy as released
through science is destructive; released through art as a Yoga-Sadhana into
rhythm and Nada-brahmam, and Divya Nama Sankirtan it divinizes
the ascent and consciousness of man and the whole of life.
Creative art is an
enrichment of the range and quality of consciousness and not a mere
accumulation of cyclopedic knowledge. Art becomes a Yoga-Sadhana when
self-expression based on rhythm and Swa-anubhava gently takes you on to self-realization
surely like the river to the sea, for all her lazy wanderings. That is why
rhythmic activity based on Swa-anubhava and Swa-dharma is so vital to the
individual. It never destroys, but integrates and builds. So truly creative art
is bound to take you to the foot-stool of God – give you Brahma-Jnana, self-realization,
the highest knowledge.
Life, art and criticism,
under this selective conception of a great ideal, become the noblest striving
of man, work that is worship at the most exalted level, seeking Divine grace
and joy in a dynamic daily surrender of your ego through Nishkamya Karma based
on Dharma and love.