A reply to “Art from the Sacred to the Profane,” by Frithjof Schuon
Sacred Art is informed by the flesh made word of the Inward Path, and by the word made flesh of the Outward Path. Profane Art is not informed by the flesh made word of the Inward Path. The profane artist himself takes the place of the Spirit Within or he uses art models with no connection to the sacred.
Art is not defined as profane because it transmits only man, it is profane because it ignores the sacred.
Beauty becomes vital in Sacred Art because Perfect Beauty is the Form-Goal of the Activating Spirit in evolution, which is the Seed seeking the Trinity of Perfect Truth (Father), Perfect Beauty (Son) and Perfect Goodness (Holy Spirit).
The mission of Sacred Art is to transmit Perfect Truth, Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness, which then can expand the virtually abstract definition of Traditional Sacred Art. Attraction toward Beauty is attraction toward God. God is an Object not merely a definition.
Defining beauty as “Peace” is defining from the Father Aspect of the Trinity, which is Perfect Truth, and this truth does suggest peaceful repose. But the Trinity also suggests action, form, and power in evolution.
We can go back to, or go forward to, the Promethean, which was so demeaned by the Traditionalists. We are evolving to God in the Outward Path, and we must not be stunted by the Great Spiritual Blockade of Traditionalism that tends to pay attention “only” to the Perfect Truth of the Trinity while blocking the other two aspects of Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness, which must be materially evolved to.
Traditional Religion virtually rejects the material world, although it does valiantly try to redeem the material world theologically in the works of the Church Fathers. The Greeks were more humanistic. The Theoevolutionary Church (TC) seeks to synthesize the art of the East and the West. The human body and materialism can be brought back to religious art and formed by the evolutionary Beyondism of God, and moved by the Seed of Within, or the Holy Spirit.
Expanding Sacred Art
Frithjof Schuon said “In metaphysical truth there is neither here--below nor hereafter--everything is contained in it.” From this perspective comes the extreme forms of non representative and abstract art of Traditional Sacred Art.
The Inward Path is contemplative, the Outward Path is active, and both must be inclined to Sacred Art, just as they must both be included in religion. Traditional spirituality limits itself to the Inward Path and to pursuing and affirming Perfect Truth.
God is the Perfect Truth of Traditional Spirituality defined as the Father, but God, as the Trinity, is also Perfect Beauty (the Son) and Perfect Goodness (Holy Spirit). The Father as Perfect Idea defines the Son and Holy Spirit, which are the embodied Idea of the Father.
The Theoevolutionary Church affirms the Father (Perfect Truth) in our Involutionary Inward Path of seeing the Soul-Within, or the Kingdom Within, and TC affirms the Son and Holy Spirit (Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness) in the Evolutionary Outward Path of evolving the material world to God, the God first seen inwardly in the Involutionary Inward Path.
The Form-Goal of the Activating Spirit in evolution is Perfect Beauty, and the Action-Goal of the Activating Spirit in evolution is Perfect Goodness; these arrive at Perfect Truth through material evolution.
If one does not wish to copy nature but to “repeat” nature in its creative mode, as suggested by Schuon in Islamic Art, then one will, in fact, reflect evolution, contrary to Schuon. As Schuon put it, the sacred art of Perennial Spirituality “distrusts any materialization of religious subjects as if in fear that spiritual realities might become exhausted through an excess of sensory crystallization.”
TC can bring back a Center, a goal, a sacred material goal to art, rather than trying to avoid a Center in defining God only as universal spiritual truth, as is done in nonrepresentational Perennial spirituality.
Form Is Not Opposed to Essence
According to Schuon, form is necessarily opposed to essence, the latter being “universal inwardness” and the former “accidental outwardness.” This creates a problem. The “accidental” material is always disparaged in favor of “permanent” spirituality.
Perfect Truth that is spiritual is fulfilled as well as defined in Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness, which is the zenith of material evolution, as well as the completed Trinity.
With Form having once again taken its place in Godhood, Greek Art, which is too beautifully human to Schuon, can be exhumed and advanced once again. Perfect Beauty can be reflected in perfect human beauty. And since art contains evolution in TC, evolutionary beauty can also be explored. Perhaps we can even imagine beauty well beyond human beauty.
It is the idea of the “Extinction of Form in the Essence” which we do not affirm in religion or in art.
God does not resemble man or even superman---and traditional sacred art has been well aware of this. Schuon accuses Greek Art of no longer resembling God, but God resembling man. Traditionalists more or less reject Greek-Roman art as a deviation from Sacred Religious Art, but TC can affirm Greek-Roman art as an evolutionary art, pointing the way upward by symbolizing the evolution of man to Godhood through Beauty as well as through Truth.
The sacralizing element in Beauty relates to Godhood, not to the earth, but earthly beauty at it zenith is closer to the Divine and suggests the path to the Divine.
Traditional Sacred Art finds the symbol in the Soul Within and creates the style relating to the people, the culture, and the religion. TC finds in the Spirit Within the Seed and activation of the body to evolve to God and therefore the symbol can be brought back to the body.
The Body As Paragon
One could say that the marvels of Traditional Sacred Art, the Cathedrals, etc., are the exteriorizing of the Soul Within of the Involutionary Inward Path. In Traditional Sacred Art there is always a pull, or even a conflict between material virgin nature and the Soul Within, as if the body were too much contrary to the ways of the Spirit.
When the Soul Within is the “only” goal and not also the Spirit-Within-activation of material life, then material life can be demeaned. There can even be a split or conflict between them.
TC will bring Sacred Art back to the body since it is the body in material life that must evolve to Godhood. But we certainly do not forget about the Soul Within. The Spirit Within contains the Seed which is the Highest Element in material life and in our bodies. The Soul is the zenith of the mind in the Body, and the body is the Temple of the Spirit. The Body is the Temple of the “Order of the Outward Path.”
TC may bring man back to the “Golden Age” of Art by bringing man back to nature, back to virginal nature, back to materialism, as the ingredient with which to evolve to Godhood.
Traditional Sacred Art can be seen as showing the goal of Involution to the Soul Within, as symbolized in Temples, Mosques, Churches, Icons, and Rituals. This is certainly honored in TC as one of the Two Sacred Paths to God, that is, the Involutionary Inward Path.
TC revitalizes Traditional Sacred Art and the Involutionary Inward Path. The evolving body itself is the Temple and the material art of the Evolutionary Outward Path, including its goal of Godhood. What does God look like? This is the Mystery of the Outward Path.
In the Order of the Outward Path, the Sun and the Polar Star are superseded by the Kosmic Summit, and the Kosmic Summit is indirectly related to the evolving body. The material earth is redeemed as the sacred ingredient in the evolution to God, and the body is the Paragon of Evolution.
The Two Arts of the Inward and Outward Paths do not conflict, they compliment one another. The Inner God is the Outer God we must evolve to.
What we have dreamed of is real, the symbol is in our deepest heart is the Spirit Within and is real as the Supreme Material Object of our evolution to Godhood.
The highest possible degree of material Beauty must be returned to and redeemed from the decline of the body due to the Great Spiritual Blockade. The Half-Truth of the Inward Path joins the Half-Truth of the Outward Path to end the Great Spiritual Blockade of the Outward Path by the Inward Path.
The body is the activation of the essence within and the form of the evolution to God.
The Body And Object In Art
The function of all the arts is to bring the lower back to the higher, to bring the Spirit Within back to God. The body represents becoming-being, object, as contrasted with thought, or abstract thought. When God is an Object, a Body, then the body can come forward as a Sacred Symbol.
When the Spirit is opposed to the Soul (Body) then the body is demeaned, just as nakedness is wrongly opposed to clothing. If we are opposed to animal nature, then we downplay animal nature. The classical nudes are redeemed in the Sacred Art of the Evolutionary Christian Church, unlike Traditional Sacred Art where clothing is “opposed to nakedness as the soul is opposed to the body.” (Schuon) In EC the Soul is not opposed to the Body (Spirit) and the Priest is not opposed to the animal nature. Evolution is the process of Civilizing the Beast, the beast evolves to Godhood.
Perhaps like Traditional Christian and Buddhist art, the sacred art of TC will be centered on the bearer of evolution, the man-God, the superman. The ancient Greeks seemed to have used this subject matter, even if Schuon thinks this art was not enough informed by the sacred.
In TC we do not speak of the “resignation to the Will of God” but of the Assent of the Spirit to God. Inward art marks the descent to the Soul-Within, outward art the assent of the Spirit to Godhood.
God cannot be represented realistically because we do not know how God looks, and we probably will not know until we attain Godhood. But we can represent Beauty and Goodness and Truth in their highest human and superhuman forms and expressions.
When we “exteriorize a metaphysic” or show “an image of infinity,” we will not leave materialism out of the picture.
Positive and Negative Theology in the Arts
In the Arts, the Positive Theology of TC does not, as in Traditionalism and Negative Theology, search for or “recall” a lost Paradise of melancholy. Positive Theology is not about a lost Paradise but about a future Paradise at the end of evolution. The Spirit Within the Body does not mourn for a lost Paradise but anticipates the Paradise to come.
Indeed the Spirit “remembers” Paradise, as Plato suggested, as the Spirit is the Seed of Godhood. But it is not a lost Paradise but a future Paradise which helps activate material evolution.
Art should be ascending more than descending. The Inner Path descends to the Soul but then the Outer Path ascends to the destination of the Spirit, not within, but without, in the evolution to Godhood. Traditionalism “only” descends to the Soul, seeing no ascent through materialism.
“Greatness pre-exists in things” (Schuon), yet in Traditionalism greatness tends to stop there at the Soul Within. In Positive Theology the “Dance of Shiva” brings Atma back to Maya, not Maya back to Atma, as in negative theology. The inner is brought to the outer, the outer is only secondary to the inner.
Making an Idol of the Soul
We can bring Eros, survival, and reproduction back to the sacred, after it has been largely exiled (with a few Primordial exceptions) by Traditionalism due to its materialistic content, which is considered inferior.
The essence of survival and reproduction is the thirst for Heavenly Beauty. When this Sacred Goal is missing, sex and reproduction can be defined as profane.
Sacred Art follows this progress, or thirst for Heavenly Beauty, whereas profane art does not. The Spirit Within and the Soul-Within “recall” this beauty within but also help activate the thirst for the beauty without. Traditionalism tends to see and define only the recalling inner path, making an Idol of the Soul Within; Traditionalism then puts up a Great Spiritual Blockade against the thirst for beauty without.
Beauty can be exhumed from this neglect. “Eros with ethics” was the way someone defined advanced Paganism but this was lost in the spiritual abstractions of the Inward Path of Revealed Religions. The Order of the Outward Path of Evolution to God brings Eros back, reproduction and evolution to God can be affirmed. This can bring the Spirit of Beauty back to religion.
Life need not be thought of as “sinking” to scientific rationalism any more than it should sink to spiritualism. Both have been idol-worshiping at one time or another. In TC the balance between the Inward Path (Soul Within) and the Outward Path (Evolution to God) avoids both types of idol worship.
Traditionalism made an idol of the Soul Within even as it virtually rejected the earth and the material world calling these things idol worship. God is a Sacred Object in the world, not merely an equation outside the world defined as Perfect Truth, or the Father. Traditionalism gave us a hubristic authority beyond the world, beyond the stars, and Traditionalism continues to supplant astronomy and biology with the exclusivity of the Inward Path.
Religion and Art
The Form of God is the ultimate aim of art, religion and the evolution of life. Developing religion was, along with Divine Grace, motivated by an innate need to create order and harmony, almost the way a composer composes a traditional symphony. Religion in this way, is related to art, whose purpose is to create a finite image of infinity.
But art cannot become a substitute for religion as it perhaps did in nineteenth century Romanticism, art should be an adjunct or an affirmation of religion.
We hope we have shown here that we do not stand against Traditional Sacred Art, but against its exclusivity, its blocking out the evolution of the material world, as it reflects its Gnostic base of affirming the Soul and denying the material. The Traditionalists bemoan the decadence of the world but they make it virtually impossible for the world to narrow itself into their blocked spiritual world.
The Sacred Art of the Theoevolutionary Church has a Promethean and a Faustian quality, we stretch, we reach, we evolve to define the Highest Beauty, Truth and Goodness.
February 8, 2009
Kenneth Lloyd Anderson
Sacred Art is informed by the flesh made word of the Inward Path, and by the word made flesh of the Outward Path. Profane Art is not informed by the flesh made word of the Inward Path. The profane artist himself takes the place of the Spirit Within or he uses art models with no connection to the sacred.
Art is not defined as profane because it transmits only man, it is profane because it ignores the sacred.
Beauty becomes vital in Sacred Art because Perfect Beauty is the Form-Goal of the Activating Spirit in evolution, which is the Seed seeking the Trinity of Perfect Truth (Father), Perfect Beauty (Son) and Perfect Goodness (Holy Spirit).
The mission of Sacred Art is to transmit Perfect Truth, Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness, which then can expand the virtually abstract definition of Traditional Sacred Art. Attraction toward Beauty is attraction toward God. God is an Object not merely a definition.
Defining beauty as “Peace” is defining from the Father Aspect of the Trinity, which is Perfect Truth, and this truth does suggest peaceful repose. But the Trinity also suggests action, form, and power in evolution.
We can go back to, or go forward to, the Promethean, which was so demeaned by the Traditionalists. We are evolving to God in the Outward Path, and we must not be stunted by the Great Spiritual Blockade of Traditionalism that tends to pay attention “only” to the Perfect Truth of the Trinity while blocking the other two aspects of Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness, which must be materially evolved to.
Traditional Religion virtually rejects the material world, although it does valiantly try to redeem the material world theologically in the works of the Church Fathers. The Greeks were more humanistic. The Theoevolutionary Church (TC) seeks to synthesize the art of the East and the West. The human body and materialism can be brought back to religious art and formed by the evolutionary Beyondism of God, and moved by the Seed of Within, or the Holy Spirit.
Expanding Sacred Art
Frithjof Schuon said “In metaphysical truth there is neither here--below nor hereafter--everything is contained in it.” From this perspective comes the extreme forms of non representative and abstract art of Traditional Sacred Art.
The Inward Path is contemplative, the Outward Path is active, and both must be inclined to Sacred Art, just as they must both be included in religion. Traditional spirituality limits itself to the Inward Path and to pursuing and affirming Perfect Truth.
God is the Perfect Truth of Traditional Spirituality defined as the Father, but God, as the Trinity, is also Perfect Beauty (the Son) and Perfect Goodness (Holy Spirit). The Father as Perfect Idea defines the Son and Holy Spirit, which are the embodied Idea of the Father.
The Theoevolutionary Church affirms the Father (Perfect Truth) in our Involutionary Inward Path of seeing the Soul-Within, or the Kingdom Within, and TC affirms the Son and Holy Spirit (Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness) in the Evolutionary Outward Path of evolving the material world to God, the God first seen inwardly in the Involutionary Inward Path.
The Form-Goal of the Activating Spirit in evolution is Perfect Beauty, and the Action-Goal of the Activating Spirit in evolution is Perfect Goodness; these arrive at Perfect Truth through material evolution.
If one does not wish to copy nature but to “repeat” nature in its creative mode, as suggested by Schuon in Islamic Art, then one will, in fact, reflect evolution, contrary to Schuon. As Schuon put it, the sacred art of Perennial Spirituality “distrusts any materialization of religious subjects as if in fear that spiritual realities might become exhausted through an excess of sensory crystallization.”
TC can bring back a Center, a goal, a sacred material goal to art, rather than trying to avoid a Center in defining God only as universal spiritual truth, as is done in nonrepresentational Perennial spirituality.
Form Is Not Opposed to Essence
According to Schuon, form is necessarily opposed to essence, the latter being “universal inwardness” and the former “accidental outwardness.” This creates a problem. The “accidental” material is always disparaged in favor of “permanent” spirituality.
Perfect Truth that is spiritual is fulfilled as well as defined in Perfect Beauty and Perfect Goodness, which is the zenith of material evolution, as well as the completed Trinity.
With Form having once again taken its place in Godhood, Greek Art, which is too beautifully human to Schuon, can be exhumed and advanced once again. Perfect Beauty can be reflected in perfect human beauty. And since art contains evolution in TC, evolutionary beauty can also be explored. Perhaps we can even imagine beauty well beyond human beauty.
It is the idea of the “Extinction of Form in the Essence” which we do not affirm in religion or in art.
God does not resemble man or even superman---and traditional sacred art has been well aware of this. Schuon accuses Greek Art of no longer resembling God, but God resembling man. Traditionalists more or less reject Greek-Roman art as a deviation from Sacred Religious Art, but TC can affirm Greek-Roman art as an evolutionary art, pointing the way upward by symbolizing the evolution of man to Godhood through Beauty as well as through Truth.
The sacralizing element in Beauty relates to Godhood, not to the earth, but earthly beauty at it zenith is closer to the Divine and suggests the path to the Divine.
Traditional Sacred Art finds the symbol in the Soul Within and creates the style relating to the people, the culture, and the religion. TC finds in the Spirit Within the Seed and activation of the body to evolve to God and therefore the symbol can be brought back to the body.
The Body As Paragon
One could say that the marvels of Traditional Sacred Art, the Cathedrals, etc., are the exteriorizing of the Soul Within of the Involutionary Inward Path. In Traditional Sacred Art there is always a pull, or even a conflict between material virgin nature and the Soul Within, as if the body were too much contrary to the ways of the Spirit.
When the Soul Within is the “only” goal and not also the Spirit-Within-activation of material life, then material life can be demeaned. There can even be a split or conflict between them.
TC will bring Sacred Art back to the body since it is the body in material life that must evolve to Godhood. But we certainly do not forget about the Soul Within. The Spirit Within contains the Seed which is the Highest Element in material life and in our bodies. The Soul is the zenith of the mind in the Body, and the body is the Temple of the Spirit. The Body is the Temple of the “Order of the Outward Path.”
TC may bring man back to the “Golden Age” of Art by bringing man back to nature, back to virginal nature, back to materialism, as the ingredient with which to evolve to Godhood.
Traditional Sacred Art can be seen as showing the goal of Involution to the Soul Within, as symbolized in Temples, Mosques, Churches, Icons, and Rituals. This is certainly honored in TC as one of the Two Sacred Paths to God, that is, the Involutionary Inward Path.
TC revitalizes Traditional Sacred Art and the Involutionary Inward Path. The evolving body itself is the Temple and the material art of the Evolutionary Outward Path, including its goal of Godhood. What does God look like? This is the Mystery of the Outward Path.
In the Order of the Outward Path, the Sun and the Polar Star are superseded by the Kosmic Summit, and the Kosmic Summit is indirectly related to the evolving body. The material earth is redeemed as the sacred ingredient in the evolution to God, and the body is the Paragon of Evolution.
The Two Arts of the Inward and Outward Paths do not conflict, they compliment one another. The Inner God is the Outer God we must evolve to.
What we have dreamed of is real, the symbol is in our deepest heart is the Spirit Within and is real as the Supreme Material Object of our evolution to Godhood.
The highest possible degree of material Beauty must be returned to and redeemed from the decline of the body due to the Great Spiritual Blockade. The Half-Truth of the Inward Path joins the Half-Truth of the Outward Path to end the Great Spiritual Blockade of the Outward Path by the Inward Path.
The body is the activation of the essence within and the form of the evolution to God.
The Body And Object In Art
The function of all the arts is to bring the lower back to the higher, to bring the Spirit Within back to God. The body represents becoming-being, object, as contrasted with thought, or abstract thought. When God is an Object, a Body, then the body can come forward as a Sacred Symbol.
When the Spirit is opposed to the Soul (Body) then the body is demeaned, just as nakedness is wrongly opposed to clothing. If we are opposed to animal nature, then we downplay animal nature. The classical nudes are redeemed in the Sacred Art of the Evolutionary Christian Church, unlike Traditional Sacred Art where clothing is “opposed to nakedness as the soul is opposed to the body.” (Schuon) In EC the Soul is not opposed to the Body (Spirit) and the Priest is not opposed to the animal nature. Evolution is the process of Civilizing the Beast, the beast evolves to Godhood.
Perhaps like Traditional Christian and Buddhist art, the sacred art of TC will be centered on the bearer of evolution, the man-God, the superman. The ancient Greeks seemed to have used this subject matter, even if Schuon thinks this art was not enough informed by the sacred.
In TC we do not speak of the “resignation to the Will of God” but of the Assent of the Spirit to God. Inward art marks the descent to the Soul-Within, outward art the assent of the Spirit to Godhood.
God cannot be represented realistically because we do not know how God looks, and we probably will not know until we attain Godhood. But we can represent Beauty and Goodness and Truth in their highest human and superhuman forms and expressions.
When we “exteriorize a metaphysic” or show “an image of infinity,” we will not leave materialism out of the picture.
Positive and Negative Theology in the Arts
In the Arts, the Positive Theology of TC does not, as in Traditionalism and Negative Theology, search for or “recall” a lost Paradise of melancholy. Positive Theology is not about a lost Paradise but about a future Paradise at the end of evolution. The Spirit Within the Body does not mourn for a lost Paradise but anticipates the Paradise to come.
Indeed the Spirit “remembers” Paradise, as Plato suggested, as the Spirit is the Seed of Godhood. But it is not a lost Paradise but a future Paradise which helps activate material evolution.
Art should be ascending more than descending. The Inner Path descends to the Soul but then the Outer Path ascends to the destination of the Spirit, not within, but without, in the evolution to Godhood. Traditionalism “only” descends to the Soul, seeing no ascent through materialism.
“Greatness pre-exists in things” (Schuon), yet in Traditionalism greatness tends to stop there at the Soul Within. In Positive Theology the “Dance of Shiva” brings Atma back to Maya, not Maya back to Atma, as in negative theology. The inner is brought to the outer, the outer is only secondary to the inner.
Making an Idol of the Soul
We can bring Eros, survival, and reproduction back to the sacred, after it has been largely exiled (with a few Primordial exceptions) by Traditionalism due to its materialistic content, which is considered inferior.
The essence of survival and reproduction is the thirst for Heavenly Beauty. When this Sacred Goal is missing, sex and reproduction can be defined as profane.
Sacred Art follows this progress, or thirst for Heavenly Beauty, whereas profane art does not. The Spirit Within and the Soul-Within “recall” this beauty within but also help activate the thirst for the beauty without. Traditionalism tends to see and define only the recalling inner path, making an Idol of the Soul Within; Traditionalism then puts up a Great Spiritual Blockade against the thirst for beauty without.
Beauty can be exhumed from this neglect. “Eros with ethics” was the way someone defined advanced Paganism but this was lost in the spiritual abstractions of the Inward Path of Revealed Religions. The Order of the Outward Path of Evolution to God brings Eros back, reproduction and evolution to God can be affirmed. This can bring the Spirit of Beauty back to religion.
Life need not be thought of as “sinking” to scientific rationalism any more than it should sink to spiritualism. Both have been idol-worshiping at one time or another. In TC the balance between the Inward Path (Soul Within) and the Outward Path (Evolution to God) avoids both types of idol worship.
Traditionalism made an idol of the Soul Within even as it virtually rejected the earth and the material world calling these things idol worship. God is a Sacred Object in the world, not merely an equation outside the world defined as Perfect Truth, or the Father. Traditionalism gave us a hubristic authority beyond the world, beyond the stars, and Traditionalism continues to supplant astronomy and biology with the exclusivity of the Inward Path.
Religion and Art
The Form of God is the ultimate aim of art, religion and the evolution of life. Developing religion was, along with Divine Grace, motivated by an innate need to create order and harmony, almost the way a composer composes a traditional symphony. Religion in this way, is related to art, whose purpose is to create a finite image of infinity.
But art cannot become a substitute for religion as it perhaps did in nineteenth century Romanticism, art should be an adjunct or an affirmation of religion.
We hope we have shown here that we do not stand against Traditional Sacred Art, but against its exclusivity, its blocking out the evolution of the material world, as it reflects its Gnostic base of affirming the Soul and denying the material. The Traditionalists bemoan the decadence of the world but they make it virtually impossible for the world to narrow itself into their blocked spiritual world.
The Sacred Art of the Theoevolutionary Church has a Promethean and a Faustian quality, we stretch, we reach, we evolve to define the Highest Beauty, Truth and Goodness.
February 8, 2009
Kenneth Lloyd Anderson
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment